China power plant emissions to rise 60 pct by 2017

By Deborah Zabarenko, Environment Correspondent

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Climate-warming emissions from China's power plants -- already among the world's worst greenhouse polluters -- will rise by some 60 percent in the next decade, a new global database showed on Wednesday.

Four Chinese power companies, including the biggest carbon dioxide emitter, Huaneng Power International, were among the top 10 on the database; there were two each from the United States and Germany and one each from South Africa and India.

The numbers show that despite international talk about cutting down on emissions that spur global warming, these emissions are going to rise steeply for the next 10 years, said David Wheeler of the Washington-based Center for Global Development, a nonpartisan think tank that compiled the database.

"Although our politics seem to be headed toward some new understanding and action here, the investment picture that we see right now ... is a continued large-scale commitment to coal-fired production, which is the most intensive in CO2 (carbon dioxide) pollution," Wheeler said by telephone.

This trend will occur not only in the fast-developing economies of China and India, but also in the United States and to some extent in western Europe, he said.

The database -- dubbed CARMA, for Carbon Monitoring for Action, and available online at carma.org -- lists carbon emissions from 50,000 power plants around the world, with figures for the year 2000, 2007, and five to 10 years in the future, based on published plans.

100 CEOS WIELD THE POWER

By 2017, China will far outpace the United States, the current leader in power plant emissions of carbon dioxide, a potent greenhouse gas, the database found.