Let me put a card on the table. I'm the chairman of the International Emissions Trading Association. I just want to declare my position before we start.
The Kyoto Protocol basically was the incentive that got Alcan to accelerate its efforts in this area. The decision made by the board and the executive committee in 1997 was, let's not wait; the sooner we learn how to do this, the more advanced we will be and the more of a competitive advantage we'll have. So the Kyoto Protocol was a catalytic action. It was something we took seriously and decided to move on. If you look at it going forward, I think the important issue with Kyoto is what do we do after 2012. Otherwise, if we don't have a new set of targets, whether we reach the ones we have or not, it's going to fall apart, and carbon markets will not have an incentive to properly price carbon.
On carbon markets and international markets, I don't want to be parochial—I'm a good Canadian and a good Quebecker—but it doesn't matter; we're going to do it anyway. We've accessed the European trading system, we've accessed the Asian trading system. If Canada has a domestic market, we'll access that one. I do believe, however, that in terms of competitive advantage it doesn't make sense to merely have a domestic carbon market going forward. You're going to need a North American market in order to offset some of the other blocs that are working.
Second, you have to look at carbon markets as, one, the most efficient way of setting a pricing signal for carbon, and two, as a value enhancer for people to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Now, the Europeans are still learning, but they've had one up and running and they will reform it. It will continue. The forward price for carbon for 2009 this morning was about €13. So there is a pricing mechanism.
On meeting or exceeding the Kyoto targets, yes, we have. Credit for early action was something we gave up on in the round tables that we sat on for five years, and we said, quite honestly, drop it. But there is a way that government in regulation, in setting targets for specific sectors, can recognize what companies have done, and that is that you don't have to go back to 1990, but if you're a leader and you've exceeded your target, you can set your base year differently. You can say, okay, for this industry they've met targets, so their base year will be 2000, not 1990. For people who have not met their targets, you can allocate the base year differently. There are ways in which, from a regulatory perspective, you can recognize what industrial sectors have done and then allow them to get that benefit for early action. That's up to the regulators.