By Madeleine Cuff, Business Green.

Despite optimistic lobbying from business, most people were not expecting the Paris Agreement to deliver much in the way of progress for the international carbon market.

So perhaps one of the big surprises to emerge from the summit was the fact the treaty appeared to provide a long-term boost to carbon markets - not only by setting a clear long-term direction for decarbonisation efforts, but also with the inclusion of specific proposals to enable greater co-operation between different regional carbon markets.

According to the annual Carbon Market Monitor report, released this week by the Point Carbon team of analysts at Thomson Reuters, observers at the UN talks were surprised to see that the treaty "contains clear support" for the creation of new market mechanisms for the transfer of mitigation outcomes.