One of the first mandatory country-level Emissions Trading Schemes as well as the third largest in the world, South Korea’s K-ETS was launched in 2015 and covers nearly three-quarters of the entire country’s S1+S2 emissions. As one of the first movers in the compliance markets the K-ETS is already in its third phase of implementation, with futures trading expected later in 2023 and individual/international participation in 2024. South Korea has set a national target of net zero by 2050, and the K-ETS will serve as a cornerstone to achieve that.
Initially, the Australian government introduced a carbon pricing scheme in 2011 but it was fairly quickly repealed in 2014. It would take until 2023 for Australia to take another crack at launching an ETS, featuring domestic offset-like products named Australian Carbon Credit Units, or ACCUs. While the Australian ETS is still in its nascent early stages, investors and speculators have already piled into ACCUs, even though the actual drafting of relevant legislation isn’t expected to begin until late 2023. Still, with ACCU prices capped at $75/tonne rising by CPI plus 2 percent a year, those loading up are expecting a supply/demand imbalance to drive prices towards the cap.