A recent report from EY suggesting that local prices may have peaked has been cited as a possible reason for the decline.
"It's had a good run from $68 (in January) through to $86.25," Nigel Brunel, head of commodities at Jarden, said.
"The EY report saying that there might be more units in the market than is required - which I don't agree with - may have been a factor," Brunel told the Herald.
"A few people are holding some decent positions and they may just want to trim them a little bit ahead of the auction (on March 16).
"It was brave of them (EY) to call the top of the market, which is effectively what they were doing," he said.
The Emissions Trading Scheme's (ETS) quarterly auctions are the Government's main tool for meeting domestic and international climate change targets.
Even at today's lower levels, prices have come a long way from early in 2020, when units traded at just $25.
The Government last week, in a discussion document, outlined possible changes to the New Zealand ETS.
The EY report titled "NZ ETS prices: Don't bank on the bull run continuing" was published last month.
"With the passage of the NZ ETS reform Bill through Parliament in 2020, the New Zealand Emissions Trading Scheme (NZ ETS) has moved into a new phase of its life," it said.
"These changes have raised new questions about how to approach price forecasting for New Zealand Units.
"Many of the strongest price signals that have driven NZU prices in the past, including prices in the Kyoto global marketplace and the fixed price option, have now been removed," the report said.
The central theme of the report was that there is already a substantial stockpile of NZUs available in private accounts.
"If these were hypothetically the only NZUs that were available to the market because all other sources of supply stopped, then the stockpile could meet about three years' worth of compliance demand," the report said.
"We are unlikely to need NZU prices higher than current levels to incentivise sufficient volumes of exotic forest planting.
"NZU prices at their current levels are likely to be a sufficient incentive to drive higher volumes of new exotic forests, which could contribute to a further expansion of the NZU stockpile," the EY report said.
The Government, in a discussion document, last week outlined proposals to better manage carbon farming, which could see future permanent plantings of exotic forests like radiata pine excluded from the ETS.
Forestry Minister Stuart Nash. Photo / NZME
"We want to balance the risks created by new permanent exotic forests which are not intended for harvest," Forestry Minister Stuart Nash said in releasing the consultation document.
Nash said there was a window to build safeguards into the system, prior to a new ETS framework coming into force next January.
From 2023, under current rules, a new permanent forest category of the ETS would allow both exotic and indigenous forests to be registered in the ETS and to earn New Zealand Units (NZU).
The Government is now proposing to exclude exotic species from the permanent forest category.
Pastoral farmers have long complained that the high price of carbon in the ETS had incentivised landowners to plant pine trees on productive pastoral farmland.
If the proposals were implemented, Jarden's Brunel suggested it would be bullish for the carbon price, not bearish.
Under the ETS, a unit gives a polluter permission to release a tonne of carbon dioxide.
New Zealand has set a target of net zero by 2050 for carbon dioxide emissions and has set up an independent expert body, the Climate Change Commission, to decide on a path to get there.
