China last week issued a batch of CCERs to 18 projects that is likely to have totalled some 5.1 million, analysts Crystal Carbon said Monday, taking the total amount of offsets issued for the Chinese carbon market to around 25 million.

The NDRC last week listed 18 projects that had been supplied with fresh CCERs, the first issuance since late May.

The agency does not specfically say how many CCERs have been issued but Crystal Carbon examines monitoring reports published by the projects to calculate the figures.

The analysts said last week’s issuance amounts to 5.1 million CCERs, while the May batch totalled 3 million.

The issuance is a boost to China’s offset market as market supply so far has been slow, and will give emitters covered by China’s seven pilot carbon trading schemes confidence that more CCERs, which are cheaper than regular CO2 allowances, will be available ahead of next year’s compliance.

But according to Crystal Carbon, 17 of the 18 projects that received offsets were pre-CDM schemes, meaning the CCERs will be ineligible in most of the seven pilot markets and will not be of any use to emitters in markets such as Beijing, Guangdong and Shanghai.

Only one of the projects was located in Hubei, the most liquid of the Chinese markets, where the government almost exclusively allows locally generated offsets.

By Stian Reklev – stian@carbon-pulse.com

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