Renewable power has for the first time made up the bulk of China’s Belt and Road Initiative energy investments as the coronavirus pandemic accelerated a shift away from fossil fuels, new analysis showed, reported the Financial Times.
The share of wind, solar and hydropower made up 57%, or about $11 billion, of China’s total investment in energy infrastructure in 2020, up from 38% in 2019, according to research from the International Institute of Green Finance at the Central University of Finance and Economics in Beijing seen by the Financial Times.
But the institute, which analyzed a database maintained by the American Enterprise Institute combined with other sources, also found that coal investments took up a larger portion of China’s $20 billion total of energy investments, up from 15% in 2018 to 27% last year.
The green milestone was reached as Chinese foreign direct investment under the BRI continued to fall from its peak in 2015. Last year, according to IIGF’s analysis, Chinese investment to BRI countries declined faster than the expected decline in global flows into emerging economies, dropping 54% t year-on-year to $47 billion.