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CHINA became the world’s largest renewable energy producer last year following its efforts to reduce carbon emissions, British Petroleum said on Friday.

The nation contributed 40 percent to the growth of the global renewable energy last year, which pushed it ahead of the United States to become the largest renewables market, said Spencer Dale, company’s chief economist, at a conference in Shanghai.

Although renewables only accounts for 3.2 percent of the world’s primary energy generation, it has become the fastest growing energy source last year with it rising 12 percent over the year, BP said in a report.

China boosted such progress, with the nation having plugged 14.9 gigawatts of wind power into the state’s grid last year, 142 percent higher from 2012, while solar energy capacity totaled 77.4 gigawatts, 21.7 times higher from five years ago, the National Bureau of Statistics said.

Alongside wind and solar power, China was also the largest source of the world’s hydropower and nuclear energy growth, Dale said.

By contrast, coal, the main energy source of China, has dropped to 69.6 percent of the nation’s energy production last year, 6.6 percentage points lower from five years ago, the bureau said.

The nation has been developing clean energy while cutting traditional energy which caused heavy pollution to achieve more advanced and diversified energy structure over the past years, the bureau added.

China’s carbon emissions dropped over the past two years thanks to these efforts, which also helped the global market become “greener,” Dale said.

Last year the world’s carbon emission was flat from 2015, according to BP’s report.