(Yicai) Aug. 29 -- China’s investment in energy transition reached USD676 billion last year, placing the country at the forefront of creating a cleaner and more beautiful world, a National Energy Administration official said today.

China’s energy transition has made significant contributions to the global shift, Wan Jinsong, the NEA’s deputy director, said at a press conference. The country’s exports of wind and solar power products helped other countries and regions cut their carbon dioxide emissions by about 810 million tons in 2023, and its new energy industry has enriched global supply and driven down the energy transition cost worldwide, he pointed out.

China’s non-fossil fuel power generation capacity exceeded 1.5 billion kilowatts last year, surpassing coal-fired power for the first time, Wan noted. Clean energy power generation reached about 3.8 trillion kilowatt-hours, accounting for nearly 40 percent of the total, up from about 25 percent in 2013, he added.

Over the past decade, more than half of the increase in electricity consumption across China has come from new clean energy generation, continually enhancing the green share of the country's energy mix, he said.

China's energy transition has effectively promoted significant improvements in the ecological environment and the construction of a beautiful China, according to Wan. Energy consumption per unit of gross domestic product has shrunk by more than 26 percent since 2012, he added.

The quality of refined oil has reached world-leading levels, and average coal consumption for coal-fired power generation has dropped to 303 grams of standard coal per kWh, he said.

Since 2014, China's fixed-asset investment in the energy sector has climbed to about CNY39 trillion (USD5.48 trillion), allowing the country to set up a comprehensive supply chain for energy equipment manufacturing, Wan noted.

That investment has enabled a comprehensive industry chain for manufacturing energy equipment, with ongoing technological innovations in fields such as new energy, hydropower, nuclear power, transmission and transformation, and new energy storage. That in turn has hastened the growth of the clean energy industry into a new pillar of the modern industrial system, he added.

Editor: Martin Kadiev