Advertisement
Inside Out & Outside In
OpinionComment
David Dodwell
David Dodwell

Outside In | To fight climate change, Hong Kong must put wind in the sails of its carbon neutrality plan

  • The wind power plans of HK Electric and CLP, though toe-in-the-water gestures, are better late than never
  • The government must overcome its procrastination and deliver some clear climate results for Hong Kong

Reading Time:4 minutes
Why you can trust SCMP
2
A mock-up of HK Electric’s plan to build a 600-hectare wind farm off Lamma Island. Photo: Handout
David Dodwell
With much fanfare, HK Electric has announced plans for a 150 megawatt offshore wind farm southwest of Lamma Island that it hopes will start operating in 2027. This comes after CLP Power revealed plans for a roughly 250MW offshore wind farm in Hong Kong’s southeastern waters off Clear Water Bay.
Advertisement
One could be forgiven for thinking that Hong Kong, responding to the energy supply crisis concentrated in the European Union following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, is joining others across the world in an urgent push to reduce reliance on fossil fuels, both to improve energy security and to get serious about reducing carbon dioxide emissions in the fight against global warming.
I wish this were true. In reality, Hong Kong is an embarrassing laggard in the development of renewable energy in general, and wind power in particular. I’m not going to bother to try to compare it with countries such as Norway, Brazil or Canada, which by last year relied on renewable energy to satisfy 99.5 per cent, 79 per cent and 69 per cent of their electricity needs respectively as of 2021, according to Our World in Data.

Put on one side too the achievements of Germany (41 per cent) and the United Kingdom (40 per cent). Compared with China (28 per cent as of 2020), the United States (21 per cent), Taiwan (7 per cent) or even Singapore (2.13 per cent), Hong Kong’s progress is nothing short of pathetic – a negligible 0.03 per cent as of 2020

In its Electrical and Mechanical Services Department data, our government says our energy mix relies on natural gas for 48 per cent, coal for 24 per cent, and “nuclear energy and renewable energy” for 28 per cent. But given that around 27 per cent is attributable to nuclear energy brought in from Daya Bay, renewable energy’s share is extremely small.

01:13

Chinese mainland begins supplying Hong Kong with carbon-neutral liquefied natural gas

Chinese mainland begins supplying Hong Kong with carbon-neutral liquefied natural gas

Hong Kong’s embarrassing tardiness has little to do with climatic or technical obstacles. Studies going back to 1997 make it clear that Hong Kong has plenty of wind power potential.

loading
Advertisement