China on Wednesday published a list of 31 more projects that have been approved to generate carbon offsets to its emissions market, meaning the government has this week increased the number of eligible initiatives by almost 50%.

The projects, which include 25 Category 1 CCER schemes that can reduce emissions by more than 3 million tonnes of CO2e annually, was the second batch published this week after 55 projects were uploaded into the NDRC project database on Monday, although all of the latest approvals appear to have been made in July and September.

Category 1 projects, which generate CCERs eligible in most of the pilot schemes, dominated the latest approvals, with only five so-called pre-CDM projects making the grade.

The biggest project cleared was a Beijing-based wind farm with the capacity to generate 532,000 offsets each year, owned by Beijing New Energy Co.

Wind projects accounted for the biggest share of the new approvals, although a number of rural biogas installations also got the green light, along with one scheme seeking to replace petrol with LNG in public buses in the capital.

The five pre-CDM projects can generate up to 1.53 million CCERs in total, although those credits are ineligible in nearly all the pilots and observers are uncertain whether they will be allowed in the national market.

Documents for one project did not make it clear which category it belonged to.

China has now approved a total of 264 projects for offset generation in the domestic market, with 86 announced this week alone.

By Stian Reklev – stian@carbon-pulse.com

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