Editorial | Increases in power bills add to burden of suffering Hong Kong public

Inadequacies of current tariff adjustment mechanism are exposed by surge in prices from city’s two electricity providers

Reading Time:2 minutes

Press conference on The Chief Executive’s 2022 Policy Address intitiatives with Secretary for Environment and Ecology, Tse Chin-wan, at Central Government Offices (CGO) in Admiralty. 22OCT22 SCMP / Jonathan Wong

Published: 8:15am, 24 Nov 2022

Power tariff adjustments can get people hot under the collar, especially during an economic downturn amid an unsettling epidemic. It looks even more unacceptable when they come under a notorious profit control scheme that leaves little room for government intervention.

The sorry state of affairs underlines the inadequacies of the current tariff adjustment mechanism.

It may not sound too alarming that customers of CLP Power and HK Electric are to pay 6.4 per cent and 5.5 per cent more respectively from January next year. But the new energy bills will be some 20 per cent and 45 per cent higher than a year ago.

Thanks to the opaque and complex tariff structure and a plethora of concessions, many households and businesses may not realise that they are actually paying more over the year as a result of spiralling fuel costs. That explains why the headline figures look relatively moderate.

Tse Chin-wan, secretary for environment and ecology, has said increases in electricity tariffs are inevitable owing to rising global energy prices over the past two years. Photo: Jonathan Wong

Some lawmakers have described them as number games.

Well aware of possible backlash, CLP Power gave a heads-up on the increases as early as August. It also offered HK$100 million (US$12.8 million) in subsidies to 150,000 needy families on Monday to ease their impact.