The Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency announced last week that China topped the list of CO2 emitting countries, beating the U.S. by an estimated eight percent. But the official ranking is still dubious.

Because the U.S. is a quarter of China’s population, Americans individually produce more carbon dioxide than the Chinese. The Assessment Agency’s conclusion considers emissions per capita or per U.S. dollar of the GDP and goods that are manufactured and exported to industrialized countries.

Greenhouse gases by factories making those goods, like cars or televisions, usually count toward the total emissions of the country where they’re made. The U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change doesn’t account for the “embedded emissions” in exported goods.

But by adjusting emissions according to the country where consumers of goods live—if rich nations took responsibility for the energy used to make imported goods—the U.S. is by far the biggest greenhouse gas emitter, according to an article on Reuters today.

Glen Peters, a researcher at the Center for International Climate and Environment in Oslo, told Reuters “the ranking makes a lot of rich countries look worse and a lot of poor countries look better.”

A sizeable part of China’s emissions growth is being driven by its exports, and partly explains the sharp increase in emissions in recent years as it produces more goods for the global market.

Recent studies on the fraction of national greenhouse gas emissions directly related to exported goods are inconclusive, according to the Assessment Agency, but it’s clear that for countries like China the export industry is a significant part of their national emissions.

Of the 73 ranking nations, Americans have the biggest annual “carbon footprint” at 29 tonnes of carbon dioxide per capita, Australians have 21 tonnes and Canadians have 20 tonnes, according to Reuters. Overall, Russia, India, the European Union, China and the U.S. are the top five CO2 emitters.

photo credit: rahim’s Flickr photostream (creative commons)