Chinese President Xi Jinping on Tuesday said Beijing would stop building coal-fired power plants abroad, in a public commitment to redirect the country’s huge engineering industry away from adding to a source of global pollution.
Beijing has faced pressure from the U.S., the European Union and environmental groups for having continued to finance and build coal-fired power plants in many developing countries, even as it said it would cut greenhouse emissions at home.
“We need to accelerate a transition to a green and low-carbon economy,” Mr. Xi said in a taped speech for the United Nations General Assembly. “We will make every effort to meet these goals. China will step up support for other developing countries in developing green and low-carbon energy, and will not build new coal-fired power projects abroad.”
Coal is central to China’s energy mix, and it is the world’s biggest producer and consumer of the resource.
China already had appeared to pull back from some power-plant construction deals overseas since Mr. Xi made climate pledges at last year’s U.N. meeting, and some lower-level government officials have suggested Beijing was cooling toward the coal sector.
In his U.N. address, Mr. Xi reiterated his commitments that China will cap its own carbon emissions before 2030 and achieve carbon neutrality before 2060. “This requires tremendous hard work,” he said. Though China has continued to commission coal plants at home at a faster pace than any nation, Mr. Xi told a conference convened by President Joe Biden in April that China would begin cutting its coal consumption after 2026.