Australians named worst emitters

BBC News 14 Nov 07

A study of the world's power stations has shown the extent to which developed countries produce more carbon dioxide per head than emerging economies.

Australians were found to be the world's worst polluters per capita, producing five times as much carbon from generating power as China.

The US came second with eight tonnes of carbon per head - 16 times more than that produced by India.

The US also produced the most carbon in total, followed by China.

The Carbon Monitoring for Action (Carma) website is the first global inventory of emissions and looks at 50,000 power stations.

Its data was compiled by the Center for Global Development, a US think-tank.

Least efficient stations

Carma points out that while US power plants emit the most CO2, releasing 2.5bn tonnes into the atmosphere each year, Australian power stations are the least efficient on a per capita basis, with emissions of 10 tonnes, compared with the US's 8.2 tonnes.

China's power sector emits the second-highest total amount of carbon dioxide, pumping 2.4bn tonnes of the gas into the atmosphere annually.

However, its emissions are only one fifth of Australia's when measured on a per capita basis.

The UK's 192 million tonnes make it the ninth highest emitter, with per capita CO2 emissions of 3.2 tonnes.

The nation's largest power station, the coal-fired Drax plant, is deemed to be the 23rd most polluting power station in the world.

Powering change

Kevin Ummel, a research assistant at the Center for Global Development, hoped the online inventory would help the push towards a low carbon future.

"The experience of people in the environmental field has been that supplying the public and markets with information that they did not have has often led to improvements in environmental quality," he told BBC News.

"There is no reason why this could not happen for carbon emissions."

He said that the data for power stations in the US, Canada, Europe and India came from official, verified reports.

For the power plants that did not have robust reports, Mr Ummel said a model was used to calculate the volume of emissions.

The figure is derived by taking factors such as fuel type, size, age and various other technical specifications in account.

"It turns out that if you have this information then you can predict emissions from the plants with a high degree of certainty," he said.

"Carma is built from a massive database provided by private sector (organisations). It includes every type of fuel and it includes power plants of almost any size.

"Not only do we have the massive plants, like Drax in the UK, but everything down to the solar panels on the local high school.

"We feel quite confident that no-one else has information in such detail."

The philosophy behind the website is to provide people with information that they currently do not have.

"In this website, we do not push a particular agenda or outcome," explained Mr Ummel.

"In fact, we are very interested to see how people choose to use the data."

CO2 EMISSIONS PER CAPITA
Australia - 10.0 tonnes
US - 8.2 tonnes
UK - 3.2 tonnes
China - 1.8 tonnes
India - 0.5 tonnes
(Source: Carma/CGD)

TOP 10 EMITTERS
National power sector emissions (in tonnes of CO2):
US - 2,530 million
China - 2,430 million
Russia - 600 million
India - 529 million
Japan - 363 million
Germany - 323 million
Australia - 205 million
South Africa - 201 million
UK - 192 million
South Korea - 168 million
(Source: Carma/CGD)

Greenpeace protests as Australia caned over power emissions
Yahoo News 15 Nov 07

Greenpeace protesters stormed an Australian power plant on Thursday, police said, after a US report condemned Australian electricity plants as some of the biggest contributors to greenhouse gases.

Fifteen protesters were arrested after they chained themselves to conveyor belts at the Munmorah power plant on the central coast of New South Wales state, police said.

It followed a report by the US-based Centre for Global Development, which showed Australia's power stations are the world's highest per capita producers of carbon dioxide.

According to the report, Australia came seventh on a list of the top 50 countries by carbon dioxide emitting power sectors, with 226 million tons, ahead of many countries with larger populations, including the United Kingdom, which came in ninth.

"On a per capita basis, Australians are some of the largest CO2 emitters in the world, producing more than 11 tons of power sector CO2 emissions per person per year," the report said.

This put Australia ahead even of the United States, the world's largest CO2 emitter, where more than nine tons are emitted per person per year, it said.

Charges of trespass and malicious damage were expected to be laid against the seven men and eight women involved in the protest, after riot squad officers were called to the plant.

The organisers described the stunt as non-violent.

"We demonstrated what this country needs to do -- close those coal-fired power stations and use cleaner energy," organiser Stephen Campbell said.

The plant's operators said power generation was not affected.

The CO2 emissions of 50,000 power plants worldwide have been compiled into a new database, called Carbon Monitoring for Action, which is to be regularly updated by the US body.