Americas > California, Quebec make last-minute offset issuances ahead of first compliance deadline

California, Quebec make last-minute offset issuances ahead of first compliance deadline

Published 23:22 on October 28, 2015  /  Last updated at 23:22 on October 28, 2015  /  Americas, Canada, US

California’s carbon market regulators issued more than 1 million offsets over the past fortnight, data published Wednesday showed, while Quebec handed out its second ever batch as the WCI programme’s first full compliance deadline loomed.

California’s carbon market regulators issued more than 1 million offsets over the past fortnight, data published Wednesday showed, while Quebec handed out its second ever batch as the WCI programme’s first full compliance deadline loomed.

California’s Air Resources Board (ARB) handed out the majority of the credits, some 782,000, to five early action forest projects, with another 265,400 going to compliance-level projects that cap ozone depleting substances (ODS).

The issuance was the last before the WCI’s first full compliance deadline. Emitters covered by the California and Quebec schemes are required to have sufficient carbon units to cover their 2013 and 2014 emissions in their registry accounts on Nov. 2 (the first working day following the Nov. 1 deadline).

The latest California issuances lifted the number of offsets handed out by the state to date by 3.6% to 30.4 million.

They come two weeks after California announced that supply had been boosted by 4.86 million or 20% in the first half of October – the most ever handed out over a two-week period.

State officials on Wednesday said ARB’s early action offset backlog, which was agency must approve by a mandated August 2016 deadline, stood at around 9 million units.

QUEBEC

Meanwhile, the Quebec government issued 11,205 offsets to a landfill gas project on Wednesday, one of four such initiatives in the province and one of the five offset projects approved to date.

The project is owned by WSP Canada, which operates three of the four landfill gas projects.

All of the offsets requested for this installation were granted, but some 337 units, or 3% of the total, were transferred to Quebec’s environmental integrity account, which is maintained by the government to allow it to replace illegitimate credits.

Quebec issued its first ever offsets in July to an ODS project, and the 161,510 credits were bought earlier this month by natural gas distributor Gaz Metro.

The Quebec and California markets, which are linked under the WCI programme, allow participants to use offsets to meet up to 8% of their compliance obligations.

By Mike Szabo – mike@carbon-pulse.com