China has now clearly overtaken the United States as the world's leading emitter of climate-warming gases, a new study has found. The increasing emissions from China - up 8 percent in the past year - accounted for two-thirds of the growth in global greenhouse gas emissions in 2007, the study found. The report, released Friday by the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency, is an annual study. Last year, for the first time, the researchers found that China had edged ahead of the United States as the world's leading emitter.
China has now clearly overtaken the United States as the world's leading emitter of climate-warming gases, a new study has found. The increasing emissions from China - up 8 percent in the past year - accounted for two-thirds of the growth in global greenhouse gas emissions in 2007, the study found.
The report, released Friday by the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency, is an annual study. Last year, for the first time, the researchers found that China had edged ahead of the United States as the world's leading emitter.
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But
the results were not so clear-cut as those released Friday, and many
experts were skeptical of last year's finding. The International Energy
Agency continued to say only that China was projected to overtake the
United States
by the end of 2007.
''The difference had grown to a 14 percent difference, and that's indeed quite large,'' said Jos Olivier, a senior scientist at the Dutch agency. ''It's now so large that it's quite a robust conclusion.''
Worse, China's emissions are likely to continue growing substantially for years to come because they are tied to the country's strong economic growth and its particular mix of industry and power sources, the researchers said.
China, like the United States, is heavily dependent on coal for its energy, and it has seen its most rapid growth in some of the world's most polluting industrial sectors, like cement, aluminum and plate glass.
Twenty percent of China's emissions come from its cement kilns, which are essential for the country's construction boom and likely to be working overtime this year as the country prepares for the Olympics and rebuilds after a devastating earthquake.
That being said, the United States has clearly maintained its lead in carbon dioxide emissions per person. The average American is responsible for 19.4 tons, followed by Russia at 11.8 tons, Western Europe at 8.6 tons, China at 5.1 tons and India at 1.8 tons.
Experts said the new data underscored the importance of getting China to sign on to any new global climate agreement. Neither China nor the United States participated in the current treaty to limit emissions, the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012. It will be replaced by a new agreement to be signed in Copenhagen at the end of 2009.
In Bonn on Friday, 2,000 world leaders concluded two weeks of negotiations on what kind of agreement should replace Kyoto. They claimed modest progress but reached no conclusions, according to The Associated Press, which quoted participants as saying not enough ideas were put on the table.
United Nations leaders told them to ''pick up the pace.''
''With a little more than a year to go to Copenhagen, the challenge to come to that agreement remains daunting,'' said Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.
Late last year, a UN panel of scientific experts warned that the world had only a few years to reverse a growing emissions trend if it is to avoid severe consequences of global warming, which range from rising sea levels to the death of entire species.
''Everyone recognizes that we're only going to get to an answer by addressing issues in all countries, including China,'' de Boer said by phone.
Still he added that China has been ''acting progressively on environmental policy'' in the past year, developing plans to shut down highly polluting small and midsize industries and for more alternative energy, for example.
Orville Schell, director of the Center on U.S.-China Relations at the nonprofit Asia Society in New York said, ''This Dutch study, which was the first one to put China ahead of the U.S. in the carbon emissions sweepstakes, is something of a harbinger of things to come, namely, of China's uncontested pre-eminence in this world of rapidly growing greenhouse gas emissions.''
The center has recently started a bilateral climate change initiative that includes such private groups as the Pew Center on Global Climate Change, as well as politicians in both countries, including Al Gore, the Nobel laureate and former U.S. vice president.
''There cannot be a solution to the global climate change questions without China being integrally involved,'' Schell said. But he added that Chinese leaders would not become more engaged on climate change unless the United States also made new commitments.
''This will be one of the new challenges of the new U.S. president,'' he said.
The Dutch researchers cautioned that there were some signs that China's emissions trajectory would be somewhat blunted this year, although growth would still be rapid. Its emissions rose 8 percent in 2007, compared to more than 11 percent annually for the previous two years.
In comparison, emissions in the 15 pre-2004 European Union member states dropped 2 percent in 2007, though Olivier said that this drop was at least partly attributable to a warm winter that reduced the need for heating.
But with high oil and natural gas prices this year, other forces favor emissions growth in the future. High oil prices have created a resurgence in interest in coal-fired power plants for industry, which are far more polluting than other variants.
About 80 percent of the world's coal demand comes from China, according to the International Energy Agency. But the United States is also a major user of coal to power its industry.
''It is crucial for countries like China and the United States to explore technologies to deal with that,'' de Boer said, referring specifically to projects that would pump emissions underground instead of into the atmosphere.
