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John Vidal and David Adam
Tuesday June 19, 2007
Guardian Unlimited
China
has overtaken the United States as the world's biggest producer
of carbon dioxide, the chief greenhouse gas, figures released today
show.
The surprising announcement will increase anxiety about China's growing
role in driving man-made global warming and will pile pressure onto
world politicians to agree a new global agreement on climate change that
includes the booming Chinese economy. China's emissions had not been
expected to overtake those from the US, formerly the world's biggest
polluter, for several years, although some reports predicted it could happen
as early as next year.
But according to the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency,
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 from the US already. It says China produced 6,200m tonnes of CO2
last year, compared with 5,800m tonnes from the US. Britain produced about
600m tonnes.
Jos Olivier, a senior scientist at the government 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. Per head of population, China's pollution remains
relatively low - about a quarter of that in the US and half that of the
UK.
The new figures only include carbon dioxide 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. And they exclude other sources of carbon dioxide,
such as from the aviation and shipping industries, as well as from
deforestation, gas flaring and underground coal fires.
Dr Olivier said it was hard to find up to date and reliable estimates
for such emissions, particularly from countries in the developing world.
But he said including them would be unlikely to topple China from top
spot. "Since China passed the US by 8% [in 2006] it will be pretty hard
to compensate for that with other sources of emissions."
To work out the emissions figures, Dr Oliver 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 and industrial sources. China's cement industry,
which has rapidly expanded in recent years and now produces about 44% of
world supply, contributes almost 9% of the country's CO2 emissions. Dr
Olivier calculated carbon dioxide emissions from each country's use of
oil, gas and coal using UN conversion factors. China's surge beyond 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.
The announcement comes as international negotiations to produce a new
climate treaty to succeed the Kyoto protocol when it expires in 2012 are
delicately poised. The US refused to ratify Kyoto partly because it
made no demands on China, and one major sticking point of the new
negotiations has been finding a way to include both nations, as well as other
rapidly developing economies such as India and Brazil. Tony Blair
believes the best approach is to develop national markets to cap and trade
carbon, which could then be linked.
Earlier this month, China unveiled its first national plan on climate
change after two years of preparation by 17 government ministries.
Rather than setting a direct target for the reduction or avoidance of
greenhouse gas emissions, it now aims to reduce energy consumption per unit
of gross domestic product (GDP) by 20% by 2010 and to increase the share
of renewable energy to some 10%, as well as to cover roughly 20% of the
nation's land with forest.
But it stressed that technology and costs are major barriers to
achieving energy efficiency in China, and that it will be hard to alter the
nation's dependency on coal in the short term. What China needs, said a
government spokesman, is international cooperation in helping China move
toward a low-carbon economy. Chinese industries have been hesitant to
embrace unproven clean coal and carbon capture technologies that are
still in their infancy in developed countries.
Guardian Unlimited |
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发表于 2007-6-21 21:30:36
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发表于 2007-6-21 21:33:28