China’s national Emissions Trading Scheme is the world’s largest carbon market by covered emissions. Since expanding in 2024–25 to cover steel, cement and aluminium alongside the power sector, it now regulates emissions from industries central to international trade — and to the finance and investment decisions of institutions across Europe and beyond. The EU Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism has turned what was once a distant policy question into an active commercial and regulatory reality for Chinese exporters and their international counterparts alike.

China’s parallel green finance architecture — green bonds, ESG disclosure frameworks, corporate low-carbon investment and the relaunched voluntary carbon market (CCER) — is developing with equal speed and is equally poorly understood outside a narrow specialist community.

This workshop brings together a small, carefully selected group of researchers, market analysts, policy practitioners and green finance specialists for a focused conversation with an international audience of climate finance professionals, investors, policymakers and researchers who have the professional stake but often lack the access. Hosted in Oslo, it is oriented toward a Nordic and international audience, though speakers are welcome — not required — to engage with Nordic or European dimensions of the topics they cover.