It is reported that China has abandoned plans to construct 85 coal-power plants (having cancelled 18 plants in 2016) and says it will invest 2.5 trillion yuan (£300 billion) in the renewable-energy sector by 2020.
Beijing has set itself a coal-capacity cap of 1,100GW; the new builds would have taken its coal capacity to 1,250GW.
A Greenpeace spokesman said: “Stopping projects that are under construction seems wasteful, but spending money and using resources to finish these completely unneeded plants would be even more wasteful.
“The key thing is that, although China has a long way to go, it has come a very long way in the past few years.”
Despite a National Directive to retreat from its coal infrastructure, some analysts think that enforcing the suspension in the 13 provinces affected might be a hard thing to accomplish.
According to energy-policy researcher Lin Boqiang at China’s Xiamen University, overcoming local resistance to halting construction on projects worth billions and employing huge numbers of workers will be “a battle in itself”.
He told
The New York Times: “Some projects might have been on-going for 10 years, and now there is an order to stop them. It may be difficult to persuade the local governments to give up on them.”