Rich nations' greenhouse gases fell in 2006: survey

By Alister Doyle, Environment Correspondent

OSLO (Reuters) - Rich nations' greenhouse gas emissions dipped for the first time in five years in 2006, easing 0.1 percent despite robust economic growth, a Reuters survey of the latest available information showed Friday.

The figures were less gloomy than a report this week, based on scientist estimates to 2007, which said world emissions were surging, led by rocketing growth in poor countries such as China and India twinned with a tiny rise by industrialized nations.

The Reuters survey, of data submitted by 40 industrialized nations to the U.N. Climate Change Secretariat and against which the U.N. judges compliance on cutting emissions, indicated 2006 emissions fell to the equivalent of 18.01 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide from 18.03 billion in 2005.

A mild U.S. winter cut demand for energy for heating while rising oil prices were a possible factor restraining growth.

Most experts reckoned that a drive for energy efficiency by rich nations has stalled in recent years, despite programs to fight global warming.

And economic growth, estimated at 3 percent for advanced economies in 2006 by the International Monetary Fund, had been expected to push up emissions.

"It's a bit surprising to find a fall for 2006," said Knut Alfsen, research director of the Center for International Climate and Environmental Research in Oslo.

Overall emissions by developing nations last declined in 2001, when the September 11 suicide hijacker attacks on the United States aggravated an economic slowdown.

Current economic turmoil is likely to cut emissions in 2008. Governments are working on a new long-term treaty to cut emissions to avert heatwaves, floods, droughts and rising seas projected by the U.N. Climate Panel.

SMOKESTACK COLLAPSE

The government data, due to be compiled for official release in October, also showed that emissions were 4.7 percent below levels in 1990, the benchmark year for a U.N. assault on global warming, largely because of a collapse in smokestack industries in the former Soviet bloc.

The Reuters survey shows that Turkey's emissions have risen most since 1990 among industrialized nations, by 95 percent. Latvia's are down furthest, by 56 percent.

Thursday, the Global Carbon Project of leading experts said that world emissions of carbon dioxide were growing four times faster since 2000 than in the 1990s. The surge was led by developing nations, which do not report to the United Nations.

"The rich countries' emissions (until 2007) are relatively flat...the numbers we have show a very slight increase," said Corinne Le Quere of the University of East Anglia, one of the scientists leading the carbon project.

"Developing nations are emitting more, faster than we thought, and the rich nations' improvements in energy are not as quick as expected," she told Reuters.