The NC Essential Standards apply only to North Carolina, and they are for the areas of Science, Social Studies, Information & Technology Skills, the Arts, Healthful Living, World Languages, and the Occupational Course of Study. For all practical purposes you can think of the Common Core Standards as appyling to Math and English Language Arts (which includes writing) while the NCES applies to all other subject areas (there are some subject areas, such as guidance, which have yet to be approved, but for all practical purposes you can consider the NCES as “all other subjects”). The NCES were developed only by participants here in North Carolina, unlike the CCSS that were developed by people from across the nation. They also were developed with by basing the standards largely on the Revised Bloom's Taxonomy (RBT), to the point that every strand in the NCES contains one verb from the RBT.
The NC Department of Public Instruction has a website with all the details for each course and their respective Essential Standards: https://www.dpi.nc.gov/districts-schools/classroom-resources/academic-standards/standard-course-study