LONDON - China will overtake the United States as the world's biggest emitter of heat-trapping carbon dioxide (CO2) either this year or next, the chief economist at the International Energy Agency, Fatih Birol, said on Wednesday.

The estimate is much firmer than the IEA's previous forecast, last November, that on current trends China would overtake the United States before 2010. "Either this year or next year," Birol told Reuters, in answer to the question of when China would overtake the United States.

The IEA is energy adviser to 26 rich nations. Birol is a key author of the Paris-based agency's annual World Energy Outlook report.

Topping the world's carbon emissions league table could pressure Beijing to take more action on climate change. Latest data show China is building a coal-fired power plant every four days, British foreign ministry official John Ashton said this week.

China is having to try and balance 10 percent annual economic growth with environmental and energy suppply issues. The rapid growth in Chinese emissions puts in perspective western efforts to fight climate change, Birol said."What we do in Europe may be with good intentions, may be very ethical... but if you put it in terms of numbers it's meaning is very limited."

(Planet Ark, 19/04/2007)