China on Tuesday announced it has approved 71 more projects to earn offset credits that they can sell to companies brought into the nation’s carbon market.
Fifty-two of the projects were approved on Feb. 2, according to an NDRC website, while the rest had been given green light at various stages last year but the information has not been published until now.
The data showed that 61 of the projects, with a total capacity of generating just over 5.8 million Chinese Certified Emissions Reductions (CCERs) per year, belonged to project Category 1 and 2.
Those projects will be eligible to sell their offsets to most of the seven pilot markets as well as the national ETS that begins next year.
The final 10 projects were Category 3, or so-called pre-CDM projects. Their total emission reduction potential amount to 1.84 million tonnes of CO2e a year, although they would be credited for only one-four years of operation. Most of those offsets are ineligible in the pilot schemes while it remains uncertain whether they’ll be allowed in the national market.
Many of China’s big state-owned enterprises in the energy sector have set up carbon asset management subsidiaries, and a number of those were among the owners of the newly approved projects, including CNOOC, CPI, Guodian and Longyuan.
Another, China Guangdong Nuclear Power Corp., was the owner of the biggest projects in the batch, a wind farm in Minqin county in Gansu province that will cut CO2 emissions by almost 650,000 tonnes annually.
The approvals were dominated by wind and hydro projects, but also included a batch of 11 biogas projects, owned by a Wuhan environmental engineering company, that can generate 513,000 CCERs per year in total.
Also included was a rare afforestation project owned by a Guangdong forestry development firm that can earn 120,000 offsets a year for 21 years, beginning in 2012.
China has now approved a total of 478 CCER projects.
By Stian Reklev – stian@carbon-pulse.com
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