China Increases Global Carbon Footprint by 2%

June 17, 2008

After much speculation, and study coming out of the Netherlands has confirmed that China is the world’s biggest emitter of greenhouse gases, though the carbon footprint of the average American is still much bigger.

For the past year many scientists have hypothesized that China had taken over the number spot but not until the release of the study has this been confirmed.

Equally worrying is that worldwide emissions continue to increase, fully 3% in 2007. Of that amount, two-thirds has come from the increased emissions from China alone, who now account for 25% of the world carbon footprint.

The shameful title of the biggest carbon footprint per capita remains with the US. It takes four Chinese people to match the emissions of one American, and takes ten Indians to do the same.

The growth in China’s carbon footprint has resulted from their astronomical economic growth, which is being fuelled largely by more and more coal fired power plants. China is also clearing large swaths of forest to meet the needs of their construction industry.

However, China is also the world’s biggest supplier of carbon offsets, providing 73% of global offsets. The Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) of the Kyoto Protocol allows rich countries to meet their reductions targets by funding projects in poorer countries like China. The theory behind this is that it allows the most cost effective reductions to take place. The problem with this system is that countries in the developing world will skip the emissions reductions projects they can afford expecting the rich world to pick up the tab in order to meet their Kyoto commitments.

As global leaders struggle through a successor to Kyoto it is important to ensure that poor countries take some of the initiative required to reduce the global carbon footprint.

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