CDM project developer and consultants Goldchina has cancelled over 400,000 CERs from a wind power project in Hebei province, seeking to convert them into voluntary offsets as the firm is abandoning the UN carbon market.

The newly cancelled batch comes in addition to around 340,000 CERs the company has cancelled earlier this year from projects across China.
According to a UNFCCC website, the offsets will be converted into voluntary credits verified under the Voluntary Carbon Standard (VCS).

“We will try to offer these VERs to buyers in the voluntary market,” Goldchina’s Zheng Zhaoning told Carbon Pulse, and added that the company has lost confidence in the CDM Executive Board due to what he called “overwhelming barriers to CER trade”.

VCS VERs are currently offered at €0.68 on CTX, some 50% higher than the current going rate for CERs.

A total of 4.5 million CERs have now been voluntarily cancelled from the UN registry since the UNFCCC introduced the option in October 2012 in an attempt to remove some of the large surplus of offsets from the market.

Most of the cancellations have been from projects in Brazil, China and South Korea.

By Stian Reklev – stian@carbon-pulse.com

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