While Europe's renewables developers once looked to the ETS to drive investor confidence in low-carbon technologies, they can now only cringe at the latest carbon prices.

The EU’s cap-and-trade scheme continues to dominate the global carbon markets, which collectively traded 8 gigatonnes of carbon credits in 2011 worth €96bn ($123bn) – up 19% and 4% respectively, according to Thomson Reuters Point Carbon.

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