Despite its efforts to transition to less-polluting energy sources, China's coal consumption in 2017 inched up for the first time since 2013, Reuters reported Feb. 28, citing data from the National Bureau of Statistics.
The country's coal consumption rose by less than 1% year over year in 2017, but the fossil fuel's share in its total energy consumption declined 1.6 percentage points to 60.4%, while natural gas and renewables rose 1.3 percentage points to 20.8% from the year-ago period.
"The slight increase in China's coal demand thankfully does little to change the overall trend of declining demand in coal's largest market," the report quoted Harri Lammi, global coal campaigner at environmental group Greenpeace, as saying.
The country vowed to slash coal's portion to below 58% of its total energy consumption by 2020.
