Jennifer Marohasy

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Global Carbon Dioxide Emissions Up, Australian Carbon Dioxide Emissions Down

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PRELIMINARY estimates of global and national emissions of carbon dioxide from fossil-fuel combustion and cement manufacture indicate 2010 was a record year. Australian emissions, however, are down to 99 Teragrams from 108 Teragrams in 2008. As a percentage of world emissions we are now only 1.09 percent, down from 1.24 percent in 2008. The data is from the Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center (CDIAC), Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

According to a media release at the site:

“Globally 9,139 Teragrams of oxidized carbon (Tg-C) were emitted from these sources. A teragram is a million metric tons.

“Converted to carbon dioxide, so as to include the mass of the oxygen molecules, this amounts to over 33.5 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide. The increase alone is about 512 Tg-C, or 5.9%, over the 2009 global estimate.

“Much of the 5.9% global increase from 2009 to 2010 is due to increased emissions from the world’s largest fossil-fuel emitter, the People’s Republic of China, where emissions rose 10% to 2.247 Tg-C.

“Emissions from the United States were 1,498 Tg-C, up by almost 60 Tg-C, or 4%, of the 2009 estimates of 1,438 Tg-C. The record year for the United States was 2007, with estimated emissions of 1,589 Tg-C. The 2010 total is about 94% of that value, reflecting economic conditions.”

Data here: http://cdiac.ornl.gov/trends/emis/perlim_2009_2010_estimates.html

I would like to see data from before 2008 for Australia, to see the longer-term trend for Australia. Does anyone know where I can find it? The biggest savings in Australia appear to be from coal and cement. This accords with data from the National Greenhouse Office which suggest a significant drop in energy generation from black coal.

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Record High 2010 Global Carbon Dioxide Emissions from Fossil-Fuel Combustion and Cement Manufacture Posted on CDIAC Site. by Tom Boden and T.J. Blasing

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Comments

  3. cinders says

    The report states globally 9,139 Teragrams of oxidized carbon (Tg-C) were emitted from fossil-fuel combustion and cement manufacture.
    Yet without a carbon tax Australia has reduced its emissions and has provided world leadership on these emissions.
    For 2010 the center estimated Australia reduced emissions by 9% from the previous year. This means Australia’s emissions are estimated at 99 Tg-C.
    As Australia’s emissions are only 1.09% of global emissions, the reduction is perhaps not as significant as it appears.

    Using the atomic weight as a conversion factor this is 363 Tg of CO2, this compares to 548 excluding LULUCF rported at http://www.climatechange.gov.au/en/climate-change/emissions.aspx,
    even after reducing it for Agriculture Waste and some industrial process, the Department is reporting 2010 emissions at about 440, assuming all energy emissions are from fossil fuel combustion.

  4. Avatar photojennifer says

    Cinders,
    Department includes more than emissions from fossil fuels. And its mighty difficult working out exactly how they do their calculations.
    I’ve been trying to find where the CDIAC have archived figures for Australia… unsuccessfully. Appreciate any help.

  5. cementafriend says

    The Department of Climate Change & Energy Efficiency collects data from industry who are required to report under the National Greenhouse & Energy Reporting Act 2007. Much of the data was previously reported voluntarly by the large industries. The lastest statistics are here http://www.climatechange.gov.au/~/media/publications/greenhouse-acctg/national-greenhouse-inventory-march-quarter-2011.pdf. The new Clean Energy Acts just passed in the Senate refers to the above reporting act and make it mandatory to comply (ie criminal penalties).
    It will be noted that the peak CO2 equivalent emission occured around Sept 2008 at a trendline peak of about 138 Mt CO2 equivalent and has been declining due to reduced economic activity, high Aus $ reducing exports such as steel, and increased imports such as cement.
    The new tax will give some initial relief to high emission industries eg aluminium smelting, steel smelting, cement etc but wil immediately stop and growth in these industries and eventually cause them to close in favour of imports. There have been announcement concerning this. X-Strada have announced closure of copper smelting, Bluescope has announced closure of some steel smelting, CRA have announced sell-off of alumium smelting and alumina processing. Cement Australia announced closure of the Kandos cment works. In WA BGC have announced that they are purchasing cement from Indonesia (rather than getting clinker locally) and planning to invest $US450M in a cement works in Indonesia.
    With a skilled work force, past investment in efficient production and cheap energy Australia was one of the most efficient and low cost producers of alumina, aluminium, cement, copper, nickel, rutile, steel etc. Those days are now gone -employment sent overseas helped by grants to less developed countries, such as Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia and even china, all for no gain in world CO2 emission which as now has been shown has no relationship to global temperatures.
    I predict that by 2020 Australia’s cement production which is now about 9.5Mt and emits about 6.1 Mt CO2 (including a 23% reduction in emission/t since 1991 according to a report by the Cement Industry Federation http://cement.org.au/file_download/140/CIF-Fast-Facts-2010.pdf) will have half the production to be replaced by imports.
    Stupid is too gentle a word for the supporters of the tax on Carbon Dioxide, maybe lunatics is better.

  7. Schiller Thurkettle says

    We’ve all got most of it all wrong. What will we do now?

    The new Japanese IBUKI satellite has produced data showing that CO2 was largely net absorbed in the industrialized ‘west’ and net created in the ’3rd world’.

    http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2011/10/31/japanese-satellites-say-3rd-world-owes-co2-reparations-to-the-west/

    It’s been known for years that the US absorbs more CO2 than it emits, so this bit shouldn’t be totally surprisiing.

  8. Steve says

    This is where you can see Australia’s national greenhouse gas inventory data:

    http://http://ageis.climatechange.gov.au/

    Drilling down into this data, Australian emissions from energy (which would include pretty much all fossil fuel combustion) have been rising every year since 1990, though the rise each year is becoming smaller, and flatlined fromm 2008 to 2009:
    http://ageis.climatechange.gov.au/Chart_KP.aspx?OD_ID=21308209667&TypeID=2

    The fall in total Australian emissions fromm 2008 to 2009 (much like other similar apparent “falls” over the past two decades) is largely due to reductions in emissions from land use change and forestry:
    http://ageis.climatechange.gov.au/Chart_KP.aspx?OD_ID=21308024991&TypeID=2

    Of the main categories in the NGGI (energy, industrial processes, agriculture, waste, LUC&F) it is only energy and industrial processes that have been going up. Agriculture has gone up and come back down to 1990 levels, waste has fallen, and LUC&F has fallen by a lot.

    The long term trend in overall emissions from Australia since 1990 is that emissions went down considerably for a while (due mainly to massive reductions in LUC&F emissions), then began to rise again once the rises in energy emissions began to outweight the diminishing returns in LUC&F reductions. Now aggregate emissions growth seems to be leveling out and falling again, since energy emissions haven’t grown, and other sources have still fallen.