The first full week of 2026 compressed a year's worth of structural change into four trading days. The United States moved to withdraw from the UN's climate treaty, the EU's carbon border charge went live, and Southeast Asia's regulators were described as entering a year of implementation. Each on its own would have anchored a month of analysis. Together they redrew the map of who leads, who pays, and who builds in global carbon markets.
America Steps Back
President Trump signed a memorandum directing the US withdrawal from more than 60 international organisations, including the UNFCCC. Beyond the symbolism, the practical consequence is that the US gives up its say in how the billions it has contributed to the international climate system are spent, while the rest of the world negotiates on without it. Carbon Pulse's analysis this week framed the moment as part of a fracturing geopolitical order, with carbon markets at risk of dividing along similar lines. For market participants, the signal is not that carbon markets shrink. It is that their centre of leadership moves, and the frameworks that will matter most are the ones that do not depend on Washington.
CBAM Is No Longer a Draft
The EU's Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism entered full implementation on January 1 after its two-year pilot. The transition is already showing friction: concerns emerged over whether suppliers can get emissions verified in time for the first reporting deadline, and within days the EU trade commissioner proposed a temporary exemption for fertilisers following pressure from France and Italy, a carve-out industry groups warned could undermine the stability of the entire mechanism. This is what a carbon price with teeth looks like in practice: immediate lobbying, immediate edge cases, and a compliance machine that importers worldwide must now organise around. For exporters into Europe, including Indonesian producers, CBAM verification capacity is now a commercial issue, not a policy abstract.
ASEAN's Implementation Year
A Carbon Pulse briefing this week described ASEAN carbon markets entering a year of implementation: regulators across the region racing to put voluntary and compliance frameworks in place, with success hinging on integrity, MRV and regional trust rather than on policy announcements. That framing matches what we have tracked here through 2025: Thailand's climate bill, Indonesia's exchange activity, Singapore's Article 6 partnerships. The gap between policy and practice remains wide, as the briefing notes, but the direction is set. In a week when the US stepped back from the multilateral system, the region's build-first approach looked less like catching up and more like positioning.
Prices and First Deliveries
Markets read the week's turbulence as bullish for carbon. EUAs surged to a 26-month high near €90 as buyers reacted to a strong auction and a tightening 2026 supply outlook. And the first delivery of CORSIA Phase 1 units took place under ICE's December 2025 futures contract, a small mechanical event with outsized meaning: aviation's offsetting scheme now has functioning settlement plumbing, and credits are physically moving.
What This Means for Investors
Three lessons from a crowded week. First, US withdrawal does not reduce carbon market opportunity; it relocates it, toward the EU, Asia and the Article 6 system that sits above national politics. Second, CBAM's rough first days confirm that compliance carbon is now an operational cost of trade, and verification and data capacity are investable bottlenecks. Third, the regions building market infrastructure now, ASEAN prominently among them, are doing so at exactly the moment global leadership is up for grabs. For Indonesia, the window that opened in 2025 is still open, and this week it got wider.
