'Monster' 2010 greenhouse gas rise is largest ever

Greenhouse gases have leapt to their highest level ever, breaching a worst-case scenario outlined by climate experts four years ago, and heaping pressure on businesses and governments to get to grips with runaway emissions.

Figures from the US Department of Energy show that world output of CO2 rose six per cent – or 512 million metric tonnes – from 2009 to 2010, which represents a total only slightly lower than the individual emissions of China, India or the US.

Gregg Marland, a professor of geology at Appalachian State University, told Associated Press (AP) that almost half of the "monster" rise could be attributed to extra emissions in China and the US.

People were travelling more in 2010, and there was a ramping up of manufacturing, he said.

"It's a big jump," Tom Boden, director of the energy department's Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center at Oak Ridge National Lab, told AP. "From an emissions standpoint, the global financial crisis seems to be over."

He added that the figures put global emissions higher than the worst case projections made by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 2007, which forecast that global temperatures would increase between 2.4ºC and 6.4ºC by the end of the century, with 4ºC being the best estimate.

Perhaps the one consolation from the data was that those countries that signed up to the 1997 Kyoto Protocol have reduced their overall emissions from about 60 per cent of the world total to 50 per cent and met the goal of cutting emissions to about eight per cent below 1990 levels.

The figures are a stark reminder to countries attending the Durban Climate Summit later this month of the importance of tying the US, China and India into a new international treaty.

"We really need to get the developing world, because if we don't the problem is going to be running away from us," University of Victoria climate scientist Andrew Weaver said. "And the problem is pretty close to running away from us."

This week China has taken another step towards tackling emissions by banning imports and sales of incandescent lightbulbs of 100W or higher from October next year as part of a five-year plan to phase out the technology.

The ban will extend to 60W bulbs from October 2014, and 15W bulbs from 2016, subject to a review closer to the time.

China's main planning agency said the move would save 48 billion kilowatt hours of power per year and reduce CO2 emissions by 48 million tonnes annually once the bulbs are phased out.

The impact is likely to spread abroad, too: while China produced 3.85 billion incandescent lightbulbs last year, only 1.07 billion were sold domestically.

The US will ban the making and sale of incandescent lightbulbs beginning in 2012, while the EU agreed in 2008 to phase out the bulbs by 2012.