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The AIC said investment trust managers in particular believed hard emissions targets were unlikely to emerge from the conference, but more important was the presence of individual nations such as China, India and the US, which was one of only two nations to opt out of the original Kyoto Protocol.

Charlie Thomas, manager of the Jupiter Green investment trust, said: "Despite the possible headlines from Copenhagen, the collective momentum at the individual country level, plus the continued policy support and ongoing improvement in financing the market for renewable and energy efficiency projects, underpin alternative energy investments."

Claire Burgess, investment manager at Premier Asset Management, said US legislation was as important as Copenhagen to regulating the sector as a whole. US president Barack Obama has already committed to cut emissions by 17 per cent.

But according to Mr Thomas, key progress had also been made in countries with smaller economies than the US, such as Japan, Brazil, South Korea and Greece.

Robin Batchelor, managing director of BlackRock, said China in particular was becoming a major new energy market.

He said: "With a target of 15 per cent renewable energy by 2020 in place, the energy-hungry nation has become the world's largest installer of wind turbines and has been rolling out a range of energy efficiency and other legislation that provide opportunities for the new energy investor."

With regard to emission reductions in particular, IDEAcarbon, a carbon finance research house, has predicted cuts will come primarily from national schemes such as those in the US, Asia and Europe in 2012 to 2020.

In a statement, it said: "While a political agreement rather than a final binding treaty is the most likely outcome from the talks in Copenhagen, individual nations are going to be the drivers of a post-2012 market structure.

"These domestic markets are being built today, in the US, Australia, Japan and South Korea, among others.

"As these schemes develop and mature, nations will look to link their schemes to other national emissions-trading systems to help boost efficiencies and drive down the cost of compliance."

Regions with emissions-trading schemes already include the EU, the US, Japan, Korea, Australia and New Zealand, fed by the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), reduced emissions from deforestation and degradation (REDD) and nationally appropriate mitigation actions (NAMAs) in the developing world.

However, IDEAcarbon said the relationships between national trading schemes were unlikely to be formalised into a global system until after 2020.