UPDATE 1-Japan steel makers to receive 56 mln T CO2 offsets

* Figure is 3 mln tonnes below previous estimate

* Japan steel makers, power firms major carbon credit buyers (Adds background)

TOKYO Nov 17 (Reuters) - Japanese steel makers now calculate carbon credits they have bought from abroad at 56 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent, a business lobby said on Tuesday, down 3 million tonnes from their previous estimate.

Nippon Keidanren, Japan's main business lobby, reviews emission cuts by Japan's major industrial sectors annually.

Early investment by companies in emission cut projects abroad -- to help them meet self-imposed emission cut goals -- gives them carbon credits in return, but there is a risk that the actual emission cuts could fall below the initial projection, resulting in lower emission credits.

In a Keidanren report a year ago, steel makers said they would receive a total of 59 million tonnes of carbon credits from abroad to be delivered between 2008 and 2012.

In Japan, steel makers, along with electric power companies, are major buyers of carbon credits via the Kyoto Protocol's market schemes to help the world's fifth-biggest emitter to meet its 2008-2012 goals.

The 34 major industrial sectors under Keidanren have voluntarily committed to curb their carbon dioxide emissions from energy consumption and energy generation to or below the financial 1990/1991 levels of some 500 million tonnes a year over the five years to March 2013.

Their self-imposed targets can be partly met with globally traded carbon offsets under the Kyoto Protocol.

Last week the Ministry of the Environment said Japanese greenhouse gas emissions totalled 1.286 billion tonnes of CO2 equivalent in the financial year that ended in March, the first year of the country's Kyoto obligations, down 6.2 percent from a year earlier. [ID:nT230592] [ID:nT328054] (Reporting by Risa Maeda; Editing by Michael Watson)