Carbon dioxide emissions from Japan's 34 major industrial sectors rose 1 percent in fiscal 2003 from the previous year to 502.39 million tons, for a second straight yearly rise, the Japan Business Federation (Nippon Keidanren) said Friday.

Nippon Keidanren traced the rise to brisk production activity backed by an economic rebound and the shutdown of Tokyo Electric Power Co.'s nuclear reactors after the utility was found to have falsified reactor inspection records to conceal defects.

As a result of the scandal, Tepco switched to power generated by fossil fuel-based thermal power plants, leading to higher carbon dioxide emissions from the increased use of oil and coal.

The carbon dioxide emissions from the 34 sectors, including oil refineries and steelmakers, account for 80 percent of overall emissions by Japanese industry.

Under a self-imposed industrial pollutant cutback program, Nippon Keidanren has pledged to keep fiscal 2010 carbon dioxide emissions by the 34 sectors below the fiscal 1990 levels of 505.55 million tons.

The sectors' fiscal 2003 emissions represented a fall of 0.6 percent from the fiscal 1990 figure.

The nation's largest business lobby projected that combined carbon dioxide emissions from the 34 sectors will amount to 503.26 million tons in fiscal 2010, down 0.5 percent from the 2000 level, meeting the federation's goal.

Successor pact urged

Japan plans to lobby for an international pact to continue reducing greenhouse gases past the Kyoto Protocol's final year of 2012, Environment Ministry officials said Friday.

A panel of experts at the ministry's Central Environment Council submitted a report Friday calling for the pact, they said.

The ministry plans to distribute an English translation of the report to delegates at a U.N. climate conference to be held next month in Argentina.

The report calls on the United States, which has withdrawn from the Kyoto accord despite being the world's largest emitter of global-warming gases, to participate in the pact.