(CaliforniaCarbon.info, Feb 23, 2017) This week’s CCO volume was focused solely on agricultural offsets as California’s Air Resources Board (ARB) approved 149,198 credits from 7 different livestock projects for compliance under the state’s cap-and-trade program.

The largest issuance of the week was claimed by Cottonwood Dairy Livestock Gas Capture Project (CAR1151) in California. The project was handed 40,236 credits for its 2016 reporting period, ranking within the top 10 issuances of livestock credits per RP. Project developers, AG Methane Advisors picked up 87,195 credits in total with Maple Leaf Dairy West & East (CAR1152 & CAR1156) and Aurora Ridge Dairy (CAR1152) passing ARB’s approval.

Origin Climate’s New Energy One Livestock project (CAR1022) was the only project of the 7 approved not to have credits from previous reporting periods transitioned into compliance offsets under ARB’s Early Action protocol. At time of writing, 30,798,000 credits have been issued under ARBs compliance protocol, outgunning the 24,151,534 issued under Early Action.

On average, livestock projects typically generate around 14,000 CCOs per reporting period. As a category they have contributed around 3.8 million CCOs to the state’s carbon market, significantly lower than Forestry and ODS protocols which have yielded 34 million and 13 million offsets.

With new legislation passed last summer requiring farmers to reduce methane emissions from manure to 40% below 2013 levels by 2030, California’s dairy producers face increasing pressure to meet the state’s climate ambitions. Participation within the cap-and-trade program can provide farmers much needed revenue streams to install the biogas generators needed to meet these targets. To date however, only 5 of the 102 credited livestock projects have been located in California.

The CCO-3 count broke the 13 million mark this week as 315,000 credits from RR ACR 2014 (ACR208) had CCO-8s converted to CCO-3s. The project has held the title of the largest ODS project by volume since its ARBOC issuance in 2015.

RR ACR 2013 (ACR196) also had CCO3s issued whilst the remainder of the CCO3s approved derived from previous reporting periods of livestock projects, accredited this week.

ARB’s next offset issuance will take place on March 9 as 26 million ROCs still await entry to the market.

Billy Hamshaw (billy@californiacarbon.info)