REFILE-UPDATE 1-Japan manufacturer CO2 may rise despite slump

* Nuclear outage likely to push up 2008/2009 emissions

* Japanese 2007/2008 manufacturers' emissions up 1 percent

* Steel makers top polluters among manufacturers

(Recasts, adds detail, refiles to fix spelling of "manufacturers'" in first para)

By Risa Maeda

TOKYO, April 3 (Reuters) - The outage at Japan's biggest nuclear power station was likely to have pushed up manufacturers' CO2 emissions in the year ended last month, despite a slowdown in economic activity, a government official said on Friday.

Carbon dioxide emissions from manufacturers, Japan's main polluters, rose 1 percent in the year to March 2008, a nationwide survey on top greenhouse gas emitting factories and offices showed on Friday. That was far slower than a 12 percent rise in the utility sector.

Japan's greenhouse gas emissions in the year just ended are being closely watched as 2008/2009 was the start of the country's five-year period of the Kyoto Protocol, the current U.N.-led global climate pact under which many nations aim to reduce emissions.

"It's hard to predict the impact on the manufacturing sector in fiscal 2008/09 from a significant rise in per unit emissions to calculate their energy-origin CO2 emissions," said Hiroyuki Yamamoto, a deputy director at the Environment Ministry's climate change policy division.

"This makes it hard to make predictions despite a fall in the sector's production due to an economic slowdown," he said.

Japanese industry has been struggling to meet its target for carbon emission cuts as Tokyo Electric Power Co's (9501.T) Kashiwazaki nuclear plant has been out of service since an earthquake in 2007. It has raised the use of fossil fuels.

The Federation of Electric Power Companies in Japan has said the sector on average produced 0.453 kg of CO2 emissions per kilowatt hour in the fiscal 2007/08, up 10.5 percent from 0.410 kg a year earlier, in part due to the nuclear outage.

The government released data on emissions of individual manufactuers for the first time.

The data for the 2007/2008 year, which finished at end-March last year, was topped by steel makers.

Nippon Steel Corp (5401.T) was the No.1 polluter, with 63.1 million tonnes of energy-origin CO2 emissions, up from 60.3 million tonnes a year earlier.