Chinese President Xi Jinping said on Tuesday that China would stop building new coal-fired power plants abroad, marking a historic shift away from the fossil fuel before the United Nations climate summit in November.

Authorities have set aside millions of square kilometres of land and sea as protected areas. It’s an ambitious plan but compliance still an issue, environmental group says.

China’s energy regulator has come under rare fire from a team of central government inspectors over the agency’s lax enforcement of environmental standards.