China's Emergence Onto World Stage Complete As It Overtakes US As #1 CO2 Emitter - Guardian

[hatrack]

Which country is number one in carbon emissions? Up until very recently, it was the US - now, it is indisputedly China, as shown by this data.

These are the latest figures - up to 2007 - from the respected US Energy Information Administration. This has (literally) every country in the world on it and its emissions going back to 1980 — plus we've put on some handy percentage change data and ranking information.

The curious thing is, we've been here before. Last year we reported that China had overtaken the US in 2006. But if you look at the figures below, the change now appears to have happened in 2007. What's going on?

We asked the EIA and this is what they said:

"Each year we review the underlying consumption data for petroleum, natural gas, and coal and the flaring data for natural gas and make any necessary revisions. These, in turn, affect our CO2 emissions estimates. I think that most of the change for China was due to revisions to our coal consumption data. Coal consumption is a calculated value based on production, imports, exports, and stock change and when measured in Btus is also affected by the types of coal consumed (i.e. anthracite, bituminous, and lignite). Data for the most recent year are often preliminary and most subject to revision but data for earlier years are also often revised."

Of course, these aren't all emissions - just consumption of engergy, which accounts for 60% of the total. But they give a good picture of what is going on.

EDIT

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/datablog/2009/oct/22/carbon-emissions-data-country-world