The world’s carbon credit market is maturing after being hit hard by the global financial crisis and will outlive the Kyoto Protocol that ends in 2012, according to World Bank and Inter-American Development Bank officials.

When the 2008 crisis tightened global credit markets, it also hit lines of financing for green project development, which help companies generate carbon credits to sell to buyers who want to offset their own emissions.

“Unfortunately, the green project lines come from the same pools as regular bank financing. They are simply a cherry on top of larger project financing,” a World Bank specialist on sustainable development, Christophe de Gouvello, said at a carbon credit market event hosted by Brazil’s BM&FBovespa exchange.

“But the carbon credit market is maturing. It’s still young but it is becoming a teenager,” he added.

The Kyoto Protocol is due to expire in 2012, a fact that worried investors.

But Gouvello said interest in green financing from financial institutions is only growing, not slowing down.

The World Bank has a $5.7 billion fund from which it helps finance green technologies in combination with regional development banks such as the Inter-American Development Bank. Both are investing heavily in Latin America.