China could overtake US as biggest emissions culprit by November

The Guardian | Apr 25, 2007

Chinese executives walk through fumes in Beijing. Photograph: Stephen Shaver/AFP/Getty images

· Tipping point for CO2 was not expected until 2010

· Rapid growth confounds global expectation

China may overtake the United States as the world’s biggest source of greenhouse gases within months, one of the world’s leading energy analysts predicted yesterday.

Dr Fatih Birol, chief economist of the Paris-based International Energy Agency, said the country’s economic growth had been so fast in 2006 and 2007 that the historic global shift of climate-changing emissions from west to east which was previously predicted for 2009 or 2010 could now happen by November.

But these predictions paled into insignificance, said Dr Birol, if China took no measures to restrain emissions. At current rates, he said, it would be emitting twice as much CO2 as the world’s 26 richest countries together within 25 years.

“[By then] CO2 emissions which come from China alone will be double the CO2 emissions which will come from all the OECD countries put together – the whole US, plus Canada, Europe, Japan, Australia, and New Zealand” said Mr Birol.

China has signed up to the Kyoto Protocol on climate change, but, as a developing country, it does not have a cap on its emissions. The new prediction that it will become the world’s largest contributor of greenhouse gases this year will add to pressure for it to control emissions after 2012 when the treaty runs out.

“Without having China on board, no international climate change policy has any chance of success at all. “Without China playing a significant role, all the efforts of every other country will make little sense. It is terribly important.”

However, Dr Birol accepted that on a per capita basis, people in rich countries still emit far more than individual people in China. US emissions in 2004 , the most recent figures available, totalled 5,799 million tonnes of CO2 from 293 million people, compared to China’s 4,732 million tonnes of CO2 between 1,296 million people.

Historically, China has also contributed little to the present buildup of greenhouse gas emissions in the atmosphere.

“By 2030 we calculate each individual in China will emit nearly 7 tonnes of CO2 a year, but the average in OECD countries by then will be 13 tonnes,” said Dr Birol

China’s breakneck industrial growth, which has been running at nearly 10% a year for four years and was reported to have increased unexpectedly to 11% in the first three months of 2007, has been fuelled almost entirely by burning coal. The most populated country in the world has the world’s second largest coal reserves, estimated to be over 185bn tonnes, and 70% of all its greenhouse emissions can be traced to coal. This compares with 32% in the US.

Moreover, there is no sign that China is about to reduce its emissions. Last year it built an average of five 300 megawatt coal-powered electricity plants a week, and burned more than 1.2bn tonnes of coal. Energy consumption in China is expected to continue rising fast as it aims to quadruple the size of its economy by 2020.

It is also massively increasing the amount of oil and other fossil fuels that it uses. Between 1996 and 2003, its oil imports increased from 20 million tonnes to 90 million tonnes. The number of cars on its roads has increased by at least 30% since 2002.