USA: Climate-warming emissions from China to rise 60 per cent in next decade

Four Chinese power companies, including the biggest carbon dioxide emitter, Huaneng Power International, were among the top 10 on the new global database, released on Wednesday (November 14). There were two each from the United States and Germany and one each from South Africa and India. The numbers show that despite international talk about cutting down on emissions that spur global warming, these emissions are going to rise steeply for the next 10 years, said David Wheeler of the Washington-based Center for Global Development, a nonpartisan think tank that compiled the database. The trend will occur not only in the fast-developing economies of China and India, but also in the United States and to some extent in western Europe, he said. Internationally, the U.S. power sector is the top emitter, spewing nearly 2.8 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide annually; China follows closely at 7 billion tonnes, with Russia at 661 million tonnes, India at 583 million tonnes and Japan at 400 million tonnes. Germany, Australia, South Africa, the United Kingdom and South Korea round out the top 10. The database -- dubbed CARMA, for Carbon Monitoring for Action, and available online at http://carma.org -- lists carbon emissions from 50,000 power plants around the world, with figures for the year 2000, 2007, and five to 10 years in the future, based on published plans. By 2017, China will far outpace the United States, the current leader in power plant emissions of carbon dioxide, a potent greenhouse gas, the database found. While China's future power generation will be less carbon-intensive, getting more electricity for proportionally lower emissions, this comes at an environmental cost, the database's creators said. "Right now we have this tremendous deadlock between the U.S. and China, I think the U.S. will have to move first. My sense is that quite optimistic. I think if the U.S. showed the flag on this that China would be willing to talk quite seriously about limiting emissions," Wheeler told Reuters. China will use more nuclear power, which emits no greenhouse pollution but poses a challenge for safe disposal of spent fuel, and get more electricity from the Three Gorges Dam, which environmentalists say will trap silt, cause erosion and risk turning its reservoir into a pond of industrial chemicals and sewage. The database was released less than a month before a December meeting of climate experts in Bali, Indonesia, meant to chart a course to cut global warming emissions. It also coincides with intensifying debate in the U.S. Congress over a bill to put mandatory limits on carbon emissions. Wheeler noted that the top executives of the 100 biggest power companies worldwide preside over plants that emit 57 percent of all emissions from this sector, giving them extraordinary influence. "If we continue on this path, then the worst case scenario projected by the IPCC, which are quite severe, are pretty certain to happen, and we're all going to regret that," Wheeler said.

ITN Source | November 15, 2007

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