Who has the world's largest per capita carbon footprint?

And it won't take much.

Not to quibble with an otherwise excellent graphic, but all it needs is animation to show changes over time. I suspect very few countries will show a decrease, and that 'the China box' grows large and fast. Add in a few reasonable assumptions, keep winding the clock forward, and the problem should be obvious.

 

South Africa is interesting case as the host of the recent Climate talks.
They are using a lot of coal, but it's clean coal technology (coal to liquids).
This week the TV show EnergyNow.com will cover the outcome of the climate talks, and also will cover South Africa energy use. You can see this on-line if you don't get the show in your area.

 

Double efficiency and you cut cost and emissions by one-half and potentially double profit. The current state of affairs says that we continue to substitute carbon (oil + coal) for knowledge. Time to apply the knowledge.

 

...better known as NIMBY, which usually means the project ends up in one of two places (another country and/or my backyard). The "another country" option is at least allows me to rest my light saber until the next big eco-battle.

 

China coal consumption will certainly increase. After a couple more decades, maybe not. You have probably heard their planned reductions are in terms of per unit of GDP.

US and other industrialized countries have already improved CO2/GDP. Quite a lot, actually.

If China, 'fueled' by the SUV commercials I see on tv, increases its vehicle fleet a lot, then I suppose peak oil will limit the size of the 'world box'. The china box gets bigger, some others get smaller.

However, after sitting in a Beijing traffic jam, I wonder about this fleet size increase. It would pretty much have to happen in other cities than Beijing. That place is FULL.

You may/may not know that to buy a car in Beijing you need to enter a lottery to get a license plate. Not many winners in that, currently.

Also they are still doing driving restriction. One day per week you can't drive your car based on the license number. I only mention that because (in the traffic jam) I saw some cars with a sock over the license plate to conceal the final number. I could not imagine who that was going to fool, and the Beijingers in the car with me could not really explain it.

There's a slice of life from Beijing. Not that anyone asked

 

Former Chinese Premier Zhu Rongji even weighed in on the health hazards.
"If I work in your Beijing, I would shorten my life at least five years," Zhu reportedly told city officials in 1999. And researchers say that estimate is actually not so far off the mark.


Clean Air A 'Luxury' In Beijing's Pollution Zone : NPR

 

Denmark surprises me. They do not have their northern neighbors hydro as a native resource, but they are the most advanced in wind grid and CHP I am aware of outside of Iceland

 

I'm still puzzling out Denmark. [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_Denmark"]Wikipedia [/ame]has this chart:

that if I am reading correctly, implies about 9 MtCO2/person*year.
That is higher than most of Europe, but Denmark is a harsher environment and I gather they do not have NG sources. Seems like in Denmark if fossil fuels are burned, it is either oil or coal.

Corrections ?

 

Remember, it's not the mpg of your car, it's the total amount of gas you burn. Mpg contributes to that figure, but so do miles driven.

When Mexico City first introduced Hoy no circula (Today you don't drive, based also on final license plate digit) the smog was reduced. But then people stopped junking their old cars, so that they'd have a second car with a different license plate number. And the older cars polluted more, so in the end the smog increased. Then they introduced double Hoy no circula (two days you couldn't drive). That was about the time I stopped following the news there because I had left the country.

Mexico has good laws requiring vehicle inspection to reduce pollution. But it also has both honest and corrupt inspection sites. If your car is clean, you go to an honest place and pay only the required fee. If your car is dirty you go to a corrupt place and pay a bribe. Then the cops can't do anything when they see the black smoke pouring from your tailpipe because you have the inspection sticker saying your car is clean. (Note: This is how it was when I lived there. I have not followed the situation since then. I doubt it's changed, but I don't actually know.)

As for counting ghg emissions, it makes some sense to count in the country where emitted, but it would make more sense to count in the country where the energy or the products are consumed. If China builds a dirty coal-fired plant to power a factory to manufacture cheap plastic crap to export to Walmart in the U.S., then the U.S. should be credited with the pollution from that plant.

 

Thanks I already know that.

 

Denmark use coal for elec approx similar to USA mix.
They do produce much crude oil for export, so the accounting question comes up. In that regard, the past controversy I saw is that enviro groups want to tag Denmark for shipping industry carbon footprint (I assume ocean ships). Apparently its a big CO2 number that Denmark prefers to exclude. Maybe WWF took the liberty to add it into OP numbers.

 

Right. If China burned as much coal as the US per capita they would only be using 56% of it (instead of the 7% that they currently use). China use coal for 68% of their electrical; The US 49%. We just make a LOT more electric.

 

Since the US has one quarter of the coal reserves then the US would be exporting much more coal. So much that the US may quickly close down old coal plants as the fuel would make electricity generated by them much more expensive than natural gas or wind.

 

Citation needed!

I have looked into the numbers... and bring references too! (Yay me!)

I can't find anything to support the claim of yours that I have highlighted. The equipment used in Denmark seems to be equal to the rest of Europe. However. Denmark has a lot of livestock consisting of pigs and cows which leads to high CO2 output.
Fun fact: Danes are outnumbered by 5 to 1 by their own pigs!

Here is a chart showing what leads to CO2 emissions in Denmark (2004):

Production of Power and Heating: 43%
Transport: 25%
Other production: 14%
Service/commerce: 2%
Resindental: 7%
Oil/gas production: 5%

Since the chart is from 2004, I looked into how this has changes in recent years. When it comes to transport, I found this:
http://www.trafikstyrelsen.dk/DA/~/media/5BFF5ED505014AAA94B53D10223D98DF.ashx
(The first chart shows CO2 for cars, the second for categories of transportation).

While the Danes buy smaller and more efficient cars (hence the falling numbers in the first scheme), the combined CO2 for transportation remains stable.

BTW. I found this: http://www.dkvind.dk/fakta/pdf/M2.pdf
Which claims the ton per. capita CO2 to be:
USA: 19.3
China: 4.7
Denmark: 9.9
Source: Danida.

So whose source is correct. OP or this (Danida)?

The greatest source for CO2 pollution in Denmark is production of power and heating. I am looking into the statistics on this.

 

Are those CO2 stats equivalent or just CO2? Just wondering about the impact of methane.

Oh, apparently not much: Agricultural methane emissions (thousand metric tons of CO2 equivalent)

2005 5,173.30 (thousands).
2010 pop 5,544,139
That'd be less than 1 ton per capita and I'd expect they'll be doing better methane capture now.

I think somebody pointed to Denmark being coal heavy. Maybe energy security policy?

From 2004: http://ec.europa.eu/energy/energy_policy/doc/factsheets/mix/mix_dk_en.pdf

They seem to be coal heavy.

PS thanks for the correction.

 

I think the chart raw CO2. Nothing else is mentioned.
Denmark now uses covered ceptic containers which should help on methane capturing - it sure smells less of shi.. "money" when you drive through the country. I don't know how much though... The statistics site (dst.dk) has overwhelmingly many statistics, so it takes a long time to figure stuff out.

You are right on the money regarding old cars. The taxes on danish cars (180% of the price) keeps clunkers on the road while new cars are typically small with less than 100hp. I saw some statistics on average car power, age and so on... will look for it.

I finally found something on the power stats to complement yours. Unfortunately it only goes until 2005... and it's in Danish!:
http://www.dst.dk/pukora/epub/Nyt/2005/NR451.pdf
Chart 1 shows CO2 emissions from power plants (all of them). The dark blue line is without power used for export.
Chart 2 shows efficiency (gives some hope)
Chart 1 shows energy usage. "Andet" includes wind and similar renewable energy.

In other words. You are right. Coal and natural gas is the main source for Danish power (at least until 2005). However. Renewable energy has been growing rapidly, so I would like to see some later stats.

 

The OP article source is WWF, which is not a great authority. IIRC Denmark is now slightly under 9 MT CO2 in per capita in 2008, bringing it well down on the list. Denmark has been doing a good job of reducing CO2 lately, but not methane. Lets give the Danes a break, they are making an effort to reduce:rockon:

 

...yeah and another break for the pig thing too, but gimme New Zealand in that case. Too sheepish? But seems the CO2 numbers may debit the countries with high oil production, maybe they are getting dinged for some of the oil production that is sold as ship fuel or something.

 

Here is the source
WWF - Footprint Interactive Graph

you will see it is not carbon but some kind of impact that includes land use, denmark leads in cropland footprint. WWF has its carbon in line with other estimates.