Europe's CO2 emissions picked up speed as the continent's economies emerged from recession in 2010, finishing 2-4% higher than a year before, market analysis seen by EurActiv indicates.
Industrial emissions rose by 4% while power and heat emissions grew by 2%, according to estimates contained in a new report by leading carbon market analysts Point Carbon.
Emissions covered by the EU's cap-and-trade system, the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS), increased by 3%.
The industrial emissions figures come with a greater uncertainty warning, but are in line with predictions from Barclays Capital (4%), IdeaCarbon (2-4%) and Nomisma Energia (2.7%), all reported on 25 February.
Official EU statistics for emissions increases will be released on 1 April but analysts' figures are considered good indicators by the markets.
Last year, Point Carbon's forecast was just 0.4% off the verified results.
"It's quite clear that if the economy picks up any more, we won't even reach the 20% [emissions reductions by 2020] goal," Swedish Green MEP Carl Schlyter, vice-chair of the European Parliament’s environment committee,told EurActiv.
"It shows that the growth-based solution to unemployment and other economic problems is unsustainable."
In the US last year, Environment Protection Agency figures indicate that power plant emissions of greenhouse gases soared by a record 5.56%.
At the height of the financial crisis in 2009, US emissions fell 6%. In Europe, planet-heating emissions crashed by a full 11%.
The projected reversal now is likely to ratchet up the debate in the EU on whether a -30% cut in emissions reductions would stimulate more green investment than the current proposed -20% target, which recession had brought closer into sight.
Jo Leinen MEP (Germany; Socialists & Democrats), who chairs the Parliament's environment committee, declined to comment on that debate but agreed that the report "shows that economic growth and climate gas emissions are not yet decoupled".
"If we want to have a chance of stabilising global warming at a two degrees Celsius increase, the power sector has to change and transform much more fundamentally," he said.
Only Spain and Greece saw falls in their power and heat emissions – by 32% and 11% respectively - according to Point Carbon's country-by-country forecast.
Italy and the UK saw the biggest increases, at 5.3% and 4%.
Kjersti Ulset, manager of Point Carbon, said that the projected rise in emissions dovetailed last year's economic recovery but maintained that the EU's 2020 targets could still be met.
"Emissions are up less than growth," she said. "For the power sector there is an increase in overall power consumption by 3.4% while the increase in power and heat is much lower at 2%, so that means that non-heating power production is up more on 2009."
The use of gas in particular had increased since 2009, she noted.