Market-based mechanisms offer a number of advantages to other regulatory approaches for GHG mitigation such as technology or performance standards and feed-in tariffs. Advantages include their ability to attain an emissions goal at lower cost and to create incentives for innovation among sources covered by the mechanism (i.e. static and dynamic efficiency). Beyond these critical cost benefits, these mechanisms provide a potential revenue source for governments. This paper examines essential elements of “market readiness” for possible new mechanisms, looking at the necessary technical, policy and institutional frameworks that a country and/or its entities need to develop market mechanisms for accessing private and public financing for low-carbon development.

The three main categories of market readiness building blocks covered in the paper are: i) technical readiness, including coverage of emitters, monitoring and verification and establishing registries; ii) policy readiness, including setting clear goals, choosing appropriate instruments and distributing benefits; and iii) institutional and legal readiness, including establishing responsibility for collection of emissions data, issuance of allowance and credits, and handling legal compliance issues. Whilst some of these elements of readiness will be developed in parallel, the paper suggests a phased approach beginning with assessing mitigation potential and feasibility studies of different policy instruments, then establishing the technical framework before the necessary legal and institutional framework, and finally entering a piloting phase with a critical review process. The establishment of existing market mechanisms such as the EU ETS and the CDM provide some lessons on the capacity building challenges encountered in developing market tools, and the time it took to overcome these. However, with the prospects of a more bottom-up and fragmented carbon market post-2012, efforts to harmonise and develop international minimum requirements for some of the market readiness building blocks such as MRV and transaction registries may be required. Such harmonisation efforts would facilitate market access and integration, as well as the development of an international post-2012 accounting framework.