Global, Regional, and National CO₂ Emissions

PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC OF CHINA

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According to reported energy statistics, coal production and use in China has doubled since the late 1980s. As a result, Chinese fossil-fuel CO₂ emissions reached an all-time high of 1.37 billion metric tons of carbon in 2004. Even with the decline in Chinese emissions from 1996 to 1999, China's industrial emissions of CO₂ have grown phenomenally since 1950, when China stood tenth among nations based on annual fossil-fuel CO₂ emissions. From 1970 to 1996, China's fossil-fuel CO₂ emissions grew at an annual rate of 5.3%. From 1990-96 alone, emissions from fossil-fuel consumption and cement production rose 39%. Growth has occurred largely in the use of coal, not suprising given China is by far the world's largest coal producer, which accounted for 98.7% of the total in 1950 and 71.9% in 2004. Liquid fuels now contribute 17% of emissions and have grown appreciably over the past decade. The anomalous peak for 1958-61 is common in Chinese data. These years are part of the period "The Great Leap Forward," and whether the anomaly represents a real event in CO₂ emissions or a data residual is not clear. China is the world's largest hydraulic cement producer. In 2004 China produced an estimated 970 million metric tons of hydraulic cement, or roughly 44% of the world's supply. Emissions from cement production account for 9.7% of China's 2004 total industrial CO₂ emissions. China's population has doubled over the past four decades and now exceeds 1.3 billion people. Per capita emissions increased considerably over this period but even the 2004 rate of 1.05 metric tons of carbon is still below the global average.