China is one of the world's biggest economies and will soon be the largest. But the country's environmental performance is still lagging despite significant improvements.

Joan MacNaughton, Chiairwoman of World Energy Council, said:"China has made great strides in building its energy security and in delivering access to energy and affordable energy to its people. It’s probably the single country that’s brought access to modern energy services to most people over the last decade or so.

"So that’s a tremendous achievement, but with that emphasis on access, on energy security, I think even China now would recognize that less priority was given to the environmental impact of what they were doing.

"And so we see now in China an effort to recover that situation, to clean up the air from coal fired powers station and from the great growth in vehicles so they now have a plan to increase the share of renewables in their power generation. "