China's renewable energy industries are benefiting at the expense of coal as the nation shifts away from heavy industry, data released by the National Energy Administration on Tuesday showed.

China's GDP expanded by 6.9 percent in 2015 from a year earlier, while power consumption rose just 0.5 percent.

Coal imports fell about 30 percent last year to their lowest in four years.

As electricity demand slows, clean energy may be used more to replace dirtier capacity, said Sophie Lu, a Beijing-based analyst at Bloomberg New Energy Finance.

China's clean-energy investment rose 17 percent to a record $110.5 billion in 2015, almost double the $56 billion spent in the US, Bloomberg New Energy Finance data showed.

The nation plans to increase wind and solar power capacity by more than 21 percent in 2016, the NEA said in December.

"China will maintain a total of wind, solar, hydro and nuclear installs at a combined 60 to 70 gigawatts per annum for the next decade, meaning coal used for coal-fired power generation will actually decline each year going forward in absolute terms," said Tim Buckley, director of energy finance studies at the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis in the United States.

(China Daily USA 01/20/2016 page5)