BEIJING - China acknowledged Monday that it soon may become the world's biggest source of harmful greenhouse gases but said the United States and other advanced countries must take the lead in fighting global warming because they had been polluting heavily for longer.

Wind power could also reduce coal-plant carbon dioxide, which is thought to cause climate change, but the impact may be small, the report said. By 2025, wind turbines could cut carbon dioxide output by 4.5 percent compared with what it would otherwise have been, but this "would only slow the increase," said Dr. Risser. "It wouldn't result in a decrease in the amount of CO2."

Any U.S. law requiring renewable power sources to provide a greater portion of the country’s total electricity would not be enough to plug a rapid rise in emissions of the main gas linked to global warming, according to a new report. Amid rising concerns about fossil fuel supplies and emissions of greenhouse gases, several recently proposed U.S. bills called for a national renewable portfolio standard, a requirement that renewable energy sources, like wind, solar and small hydro, provide about 15 percent of U.S. power in about 20 years. Nearly half of U.S. states have passed their own renewable portfolio mandates. But if the country enacted such a law — without mandates that also cut power demand — U.S. carbon dioxide emissions would still rise 18 percent above current levels by 2026, according to the Wood MacKenzie report, titled “The Impact of a Federal Renewable Portfolio Standard.”

As Democratic leaders in Congress prepare to put climate change legislation on the agenda, some in the utility industry are arguing that it will take decades of investments and innovation to get substantial reductions in their emissions of greenhouse gases. Electric power companies, which emit about one-third of America’s global warming gases, could reduce their emissions to below the levels of 1990, but that would take about 20 years, no matter how much the utilities spend, according to a new industry study. The report, prepared by the Electric Power Research Institute, a nonprofit consortium, is portrayed as highly optimistic by its authors, who will present the findings on Thursday at an energy conference in Houston.

In a sign that US electricity companies are recognising that the Democratic-controlled Congress will seek to impose aggressive climate change initiatives, six companies, including Exelon, one of the largest utility companies, on Wednesday endorsed a bill that would reduce their projected emissions by 25 per cent below projected levels by 2020.

In theory, the idea is simple. The consumer pays a third party to remove a quantity of carbon (in the form of a greenhouse gas) equal to what he or she emits. But how voluntary carbon offsets actually work is unclear at best, and potentially fraudulent at worst, say experts. The problem: No current certification or monitoring system has any teeth, and there is no easy way to confirm that offsetting companies are doing what they promise. Now, various organizations are scrambling to provide standards for what experts call a fragmented market with a product of drastically varying quality.

A U.N. conference working to fix long-term rules to fight global warming beyond 2012 "as soon as possible" was split on Tuesday over whether that meant an accord should be struck in 2008, 2009 or even 2010. Industrial investors, weighing options ranging from coal-fired power plants to wind energy, are frustrated at the possibility of years of uncertainty about rules for fossil fuel emissions upon which carbon markets depend.

FINANCIAL TIMES: There has been some recent legislation on Co2 reduction. I wonder if you see that as one of the big developments of late, and what its significance is.

JEFFREY IMMELT: Yes. I think if you look at what some of the states are doing, California for instance, or even what's happening around the world, what's talked about in the UK, I think that's going to change the way people look at technology and it's going to change the way people look at energy policy in the future. It tends to be the way change starts. I would say in many ways some of the things that have happened in Europe over time have tended to drive technology. For instance, when Europe said it was going to have 10 per cent renewables that's what really opened up the world of wind energy and solar and things like that, so I think it's very meaningful.

WASHINGTON - Thanks to the high prices of oil and natural gas, the electricity industry is turning back to coal, America's oldest and most abundant fossil fuel, to drive a new generation of power plants. The upshot is that even as politicians take the threat of global warming more seriously, the problem may get much worse. Utilities are proposing to build 154 coal-fired power plants in the next 25 years, according to "Coal's Resurgence in Electric Power Generation," a recent Department of Energy report. Most of those new plants would use conventional coal-burning technology, which would increase carbon dioxide emissions from U.S. coal plants by more than 50 percent by 2030, according to the Energy Information Administration, the analytic division of the Energy Department. A traditional coal plant produces three to four times more CO2 -- a potent "greenhouse gas" that traps the sun's heat and helps raise the Earth's temperature -- than comes from a modern plant that uses natural gas as its fuel.

NIEDERAUSSEM, Germany -- Last year, to help combat global warming, Europe started charging industry for the right to spew hot air. For the first time on such a scale, governments slapped limits on the carbon-dioxide emissions of power plants, steelworks and other factories. Companies exceeding the caps have to buy CO2 "allowances" that trade on a European market. Because CO2 emissions now carry a cost, Germany's largest utility, RWE AG, is spending to improve the efficiency of its aging coal-fired power plants, including its biggest power station here in the country's industrial heartland.

(CNSNews.com) - People sweltering from a heat wave in the Mid- Atlantic region of the U.S. might find cold comfort in the fact that the temperatures of the past few days are not the hottest on record. That "honor" belongs to a summer 76 years ago -- decades before the controversy over "man-made global warming" began.

Exxon spokesman David Gardner said the company believes the accumulation of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere may pose significant risk and that it has reduced greenhouse emissions at plants and refineries. "Our actions on carbon dioxide are widely misunderstood by many," he said in a telephone interview. He said cogeneration, or using waste heat and steam to produce electricity at plants, has reduced greenhouse gases by nine million metric tonnes per year. But Exxon has not set emissions limits and it does not invest in the production of wind and solar power because the company does not believe those technologies are economically viable yet, he said.

European and Asian companies are paying more attention to global warming than their American counterparts. And chemical companies are more focused on the issue than oil companies.

TULSA, Okla., Jan 31, 2006 -- BUSINESS WIRE Syntroleum Corporation (Nasdaq:SYNM) and Sustec AG, a private company based in Basel, Switzerland, announced today ....a joint venture aimed at converting coal and other carbonaceous materials such as petroleum-coke, residual fuel oil and biomass into ultra-clean fuels.

BREWER - As wind power begins to blow into Maine, state regulators on Wednesday considered its potential to squeeze increasingly expensive - and less environmentally friendly - fossil fuels out of the region's energy mix.

A group of Northeast states has postponed the announcement of a landmark agreement to limit greenhouse gas emissions from power plants after Governor Mitt Romney raised objections to the pact late last week, two government sources familiar with the agreement said yesterday.