China has now taken the United States’ mantle as the world’s biggest producer of CO2 emissions. Figures revealed yesterday by the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency have demonstrated that the rising demand for coal to generate electricity and an increase in cement production have contributed to China’s elevation in emissions for 2006, above those of the US.
Last year China produced 6,200m tonnes of CO2, whilst the US produced 5,800m tonnes and Britain produced 600m tonnes.
However, China has a population about four times the size of the US and in reality to compare them to the US in a fair way they would have to be producing around four times as much CO2 as the US. Although they are producing a large amount of CO2, when you compare it to the size of their population, it is only a fraction of what the US produces per person.
These figures only incorporate CO2 emissions from burning fossil fuels and cement production and not from other sources.
China is promising to take steps to improve their CO2 emissions, such as: covering 20% of the land with trees and increasing the energy produced by renewable sources to 10%. Although they are a fast developing country, they do at least appear to be taking CO2 emissions seriously. Can the same be said of the other major world players involved in CO2 emissions?
The U.S. still leads China at a rate of 4 to 1 if you look at the emissions from a per capita perspective. See the numbers here