China will invest less in power projects in 2012 due to weak demand amid a slowing economy, an industry report said Monday.

Power project investment totaled more than 739 billion yuan last year, compared with 705 billion yuan in 2010, the China Electricity Council said in a report.

Investment in power-generation projects fell 6.5 percent year on year to 371.2 billion yuan. Spending on power-grid construction increased 6.77 percent from a year ago to 368.2 billion yuan.

Xue Jing, an analyst of the council, said investment in the power sector will drop this year, as electricity use is projected to grow less than 10 percent.

China's coal-fired power producers complain that surging coal costs and artificially low electricity prices have hurt their profits. Investment in the coal-fired power sector stood at 105.4 billion yuan in 2011, compared with 94 billion yuan in hydropower, 74 billion yuan in nuclear power and 82.9 billion yuan in wind power.