"China passes US as world's biggest CO2 emitter"

From the Guardian.uk

But according to figures released yesterday by the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency, which advises the Dutch government, soaring demand for coal to generate electricity and a surge in cement production have helped to push China's recorded emissions for 2006 beyond those of the US.

The agency said China produced 6,200m tonnes of CO2 last year, compared with 5,800m tonnes from the US. Britain produced about 600m tonnes. But per head of population, China's pollution remains relatively low, about a quarter of that in the US and half that of the UK.

China's surge to 8% more than the US was helped by a 1.4% fall in the latter's CO2 emissions during 2006, which, analysts say, is down to a slowing US economy.

Jos Olivier, a senior scientist at the agency who compiled the figures, said: "There will still be some uncertainty about the exact numbers, but this is the best and most up to date estimate available. China relies very heavily on coal and all of the recent trends show their emissions going up very quickly."

China's emissions were 2% below those of the US in 2005.

The new figures include only CO2 emissions from fossil fuel burning and cement production. They do not include sources of other greenhouse gases such as methane from agriculture and nitrous oxide from industrial processes.

They exclude other sources of CO2 such as aviation and shipping as well as deforestation, gas flaring and underground coal fires.

Dr Olivier said it was difficult to find reliable estimates for such emissions, particularly from developing countries. But he said including them would be unlikely to topple China from the top spot. "Since China passed the US by 8% [last year] it will be pretty hard to compensate for that with other sources of emissions," he said.

To work out the emissions figures, he used data issued by the oil company BP earlier this month on the consumption of oil, gas and coal across the world during 2006, as well as information on cement production published by the US Geological Survey.

Cement production, which requires huge amounts of energy, accounts for about 4% of global CO2 production from fuel use. China's cement industry, which produces about 44% of world supply, contributes almost 9% of Chinese CO2 emissions....