Chinese CO2 Emissions Up 9% In 2009 From Previous Year - SciAm

LONDON (Reuters) - China could face increasing pressure in U.N. climate talks after data released on Wednesday showed the country's carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuel rose by 9 percent in 2009, bucking a global downtrend.

China's greenhouse gases from fuels like oil and coal grew to 7.5 billion tonnes, even though global emissions fell for the first time since 1998 as industrial output and fuel consumption dropped amid a global recession, BP data showed.

China, the first nation to emit over 7 billion tonnes of CO2 in a year, increased its lead over the United States, the second-largest emitter which it surpassed in 2008. U.S. fossil fuel emissions fell by 6.5 percent to 5.9 billion tonnes, the lowest level since 1995, BP said in its annual Statistical Review of World Energy.

Global fossil fuel emissions slid by 1.1 percent to 31.13 billion tonnes after peaking at 31.55 billion tonnes in 2008. China's emissions have grown sharply in the past decade as the country built scores of new carbon-belching coal plants to power its meteoric economic growth.

EDIT

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=china-fossil-fuel-co2-jumps