Japan may have difficulty reaching its greenhouse gases-reduction goal under the Kyoto Protocol if its economy grows at a pace of around 1 percent annually, according to a recent study by a team of environment experts from Japan and Britain.

At that pace of economic growth, the country's carbon dioxide emissions are estimated to increase by nearly 5 percent by 2012 from the 1990 level, said experts at Japan's Institute for Global Environmental Strategies and the University of Surrey in England.

This contrasts sharply with the government's emissions-reduction plan compiled in April, which projects the increase of carbon dioxide emissions can be kept at 0.6 percent over the period.