Japan manufacturer CO2 may rise despite economic slump

Carbon dioxide emissions from manufacturers, Japan's main polluters, rose 1 percent in the year to March 2008, a nationwide survey showed on Friday. That was far slower than a 12 percent rise in the utility sector.

Japan's greenhouse gas emissions in the year just ended are being closely watched as 2008/09 was the start of the country's five-year period of the Kyoto Protocol, the current U.N.-led global climate pact under which many nations aim to reduce emissions.

Factories and offices that pump out 3,000 tons or more of CO2 equivalent per year are required to report these amounts annually, using the previous year's "per unit emissions" level given by their power suppliers, or energy-origin CO2 emissions per kilowatt hour.

"It's hard to predict the impact on the manufacturing sector in fiscal 2008/09 from a significant rise in per unit emissions to calculate their energy-origin CO2 emissions," said Hiroyuki Yamamoto, a deputy director at the Environment Ministry's climate change policy division.

"This makes it hard to make predictions despite a fall in the sector's production due to an economic slowdown," he said.

The Federation of Electric Power Companies in Japan has said the sector on average produced 0.453 kg of CO2 emissions per kilowatt hour in fiscal 2007/08, up 10.5 percent from 0.410 kg a year earlier.

(Reporting by Risa Maeda; Editing by Hugh Lawson)