New York Mercantile Exchange (Nymex) and CME Group have each separately said they are joining the fray and pushing into the carbon trading space.

Nymex announced during its third quarter conference call on 31 October its plans to launch a slate of new emissions contracts including European carbon instruments, restructured US emissions compliance products and new products for the US carbon markets. Nymex plans to list this new slate of contracts in first quarter 2008 on CME’s Globex electronic trading platform and Nymex ClearPort Clearing platform by the end of the first quarter of 2008.

Nymex executives added that they have been working since March with utilities, hedge funds and...