That is, in any global carbon market it will be essential to verify that emissions are not newly created in order to profit by reducing them. Unfortunately, the temptation to seek bogus allowances is a natural consequence of a global carbon price in a low-cost local economy. In the simplest terms, the fixed price of saving a ton of carbon in those countries is “worth” more hours of labour at a lower wage rate. Thus there will be a category of carbon-saving investments and technologies that are profitable only in developing countries, where the trade-off between carbon and other inputs is more favourable to emissions reductions. The potential for leapfrogging beyond the current technology frontier has been much discussed, but is difficult to achieve.