Despite the budget cuts to the UK's Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC), at £85 million, energy security will get attention from the new coalition government. One of the reasons for the confidence, according to a spokesperson at DECC (in a phone interview on May 26, 2010), is the announcement of the Green Bank. Moreover, holders of carbon credits handed out by the European Union under the legislated trading scheme, EU ETS, will get a floor price - the first such policy of its kind.
According to DECC (from a phone interview on June 2, 2010), a carbon credit floor is intended to provide greater certainty to carbon markets. That price needs to be low enough to consider the impact of increased costs to consumers and high enough to encourage investment in clean technologies. They would not confirm any timeline for an announcement.
But the carbon market is operating in a shifting dynamic of economic and political uncertainty.