California’s ARB listed over 307,000 early action offsets on Wednesday in what was scheduled to be the state’s final placement ahead of this summer’s deadline for the pre-compliance era units.

Market participants had grown concerned that regulators would not clear a backlog of more than 10 million early action credits in the ARB pipeline ahead of an Aug. 2016 deadline to convert them into offsets eligible for compliance use by emitters in California’s carbon market.

But fears diminished somewhat since the body hired more staff last summer and issuances have picked up.

The early action listings were drawn from livestock, coal mine methane, forestry projects, as well as an application for 5,300 offsets from a rice growing project, the first of its kind.

Last June, the ARB approved a rice growing project for use in its carbon market, in a move that experts say could pave the way for a wave of other farming initiatives to be made eligible.

Today’s listings follow a reasonable busy issuance period for the regulator.

On Dec. 23 it handed out 339,000 offsets to nine projects in was were the final awards of 2015.

The issuances boosted the number of offsets handed out to date by California by 1% to 34.8 million.

By Ben Garside – ben@carbon-pulse.com