Chinese Premier Li Keqiang said governments should take a leading role in promoting alternative energy-powered vehicles, according to a statement posted on the central government’s website yesterday. “New-energy vehicles, especially buses, can help improve urban problems of pollution and noise and therefore everyone should be encouraged to use it,” Li was cited as saying during a visit to a unit of automaker BYD Co. (1211) yesterday in the northern Chinese city of Xi’an. China plans to have 5 million alternative energy-powered automobiles by 2020. Li’s comments reiterate a policy to have local public authorities take the lead in using alternative-energy vehicles. China’s provinces and biggest cities have been given targets to cut concentrations of some air pollutants by 5 percent to 25 percent by 2017 compared with 2012 levels. An increasing number of Chinese cities have introduced emergency measures to fight smog. BYD Co., backed by Warren Buffett ’s […]