Global green energy investment has plunged by the largest amount in more than a decade as a spending splurge in China and Japan has levelled off and the price of solar panels continues to fall.

A total of $287bn was poured into wind farms, solar parks and other clean power systems in 2016, down 18 per cent from the record set in 2015, according to the Bloomberg New Energy Finance research group, quoted by the Financial Times. That is the biggest one-year drop recorded by the group, which has been tracking clean energy investments since 2004. The fall comes amidst concern in environmental movements about the rise of populist leaders such as US president-elect Donald Trump, who has cast doubt on the existence of climate change and vowed to boost the fossil fuel industry. But this does not appear to have been a factor in last year’s investment drop-off, analysts said. A slowdown in China, a green energy superpower, was a chief reason for the fall, followed by cutbacks in Japan, another important market.

Both countries are concentrating on “digesting” years of record-breaking investments driven by some of the world’s most generous renewable power subsidies, said Justin Wu, head of Asia for Bloomberg New Energy Finance. China is trying to strengthen its electricity grids and reform power markets to optimise generation from renewables. Many countries are strengthening their grids as intermittent clean power systems spread.

“In Japan, future growth will come not from utility-scale projects but from rooftop solar systems installed by consumers attracted by the increasingly favourable economics of self-consumption,” Wu also said.

The fall in investment comes after a record-shattering surge in 2015, when renewables overtook coal as the world’s largest source of installed power capacity. The 2016 drop-off did not mean the amount of renewable power capacity built declined.

It is estimated that a record 70 gigawatts of solar power was added last year, up from 56GW in 2015, as well as another 56GW of wind energy. This is partly because prices of solar panels and other equipment have continued to fall, meaning investors can build more for the same cost.

Offshore wind farms emerged as a renewable technology star in 2016. They attracted $30bn of investment, up 40 per cent from the previous year.