At the Global Leaders Climate Summit held in April 2021, leaders of many countries set a specific goal of "net zero carbon emissions". Green carbon reduction has become an international trend.
However, the actions of the SAR Government appear to be slow and passive.
Taking "green transportation" as an example, there are currently only 44,768 electric vehicles in Hong Kong, accounting for only 4.9% of all vehicles; there are only 5,283 charging facilities available to the public, that is, each charger is shared by 8.5 vehicles. And more than 80% of them are medium-speed and turtle-speed charging.
The Legislative Council earlier passed the non-binding motion on "promoting the development of green transportation" proposed by Election Committee member Chen Shaoxiong. During this period, many members criticized the current supporting policies for electric vehicles as backward, the incentives to encourage citizens to use them were insufficient, and the legislative work on hydrogen buses stagnated.
Facing these commonplace questions, have the responsible officials of the Bureau of Transport and Logistics and the Bureau of Environment and Ecology given satisfactory answers?
Legislative Council Members' Bill Policy Analysis Series
The Environment Bureau announced the "Hong Kong Climate Action Blueprint 2050" in 2021, setting the goal of increasing the proportion of renewable energy to 7.5% to 10% in 2035, and to 15% in the long run.
(Photo by Yu Junliang)
Carbon reduction is imminent,
green luck is imperative
Global warming continues, extreme weather is frequent, and climate issues are threatening the sustainable development of human beings. The crisis of greenhouse gas emissions is already imminent. Therefore, "net zero carbon emissions" has become an unavoidable issue for governments around the world, and promotes the relationship between carbon emissions and carbon reduction. The "carbon neutrality" policy, in which emissions offset each other, has attracted the attention of various countries.
In September 2020, President Xi Jinping promised at the 75th session of the United Nations General Assembly that China will strive to achieve "carbon peaking before 2030 and carbon neutrality before 2060."
In November of the same year, then Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor announced in her "Policy Address 2020" that the SAR government would strive to achieve "carbon neutrality" by 2050.
In the following year, the Hong Kong government successively announced several documents including "Hong Kong Resource Circulation Blueprint 2035", "Hong Kong Electric Vehicle Popularization Roadmap", "Hong Kong Clean Air Blueprint 2035", and "Hong Kong Climate Action Blueprint 2050"; the latter proposed net-zero power generation, The four major carbon reduction strategies are energy-saving green building, green transportation and national waste reduction.
The reason why "green transportation" is taken as the main strategy is that Hong Kong is highly dependent on imported goods, coupled with the continuous growth of the number of private cars, the carbon emission level of transportation has always been the second highest in Hong Kong, accounting for about 20%.
At the same time, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) of the United Nations has also predicted that transportation activities, which mainly rely on fossil fuels, will grow strongly at a rate of 2% per year in the next few decades, thus warning governments everywhere that they must adjust transportation. mode of transport.
The SAR government has indeed been conscious of changing in recent years. For example, according to the "Hong Kong Climate Action Blueprint 2050", the government will stop new registration of fuel and hybrid private cars by 2035, and will continue to promote electric buses and commercial vehicles. For example, in the next three years Will cooperate with franchised bus companies and other stakeholders to pilot hydrogen fuel cell buses and heavy vehicles.
However, these measures have not had obvious results-according to the data of the Environmental Protection Department, as of the end of November 2022, the number of electric vehicles in Hong Kong will be 44,768, accounting for only 4.9% of all vehicles.
However, during the same period, the number of new energy vehicles in Shenzhen reached 191,000, and buses have been fully electrified; Norway, the "global electric vehicle capital", had more than 330,000 electric vehicles by the end of 2020, with a market share of 54% %.
After the Legislative Council resumed its legislative session this year, it passed the non-binding motion on "promoting the development of green transportation" proposed by Chen Shaoxiong on January 12 and revised by Ge Peifan of the Democratic Alliance for the Betterment of Hong Kong and Yi Zhiming from the shipping and transportation industry. The supporting policies for electric vehicles are backward, and there are insufficient incentives to encourage citizens to use them.
The "Green Transportation Survey 2022" released by "Green Sense" shows that more than 95% of car drivers believe that charging is cheaper than gasoline and government preferential policies are attractive factors for switching to electric vehicles (Source: Green Sense )
Insufficient financial incentives,
charging in short supply
In terms of financial incentives, the "Green Transportation Survey 2022" released by "Green Sense" shows that more than 95% of car drivers believe that the price of charging is lower than that of gasoline and government preferential policies will help attract them to switch to electric vehicles , but more than half of the surveyed drivers are unwilling to pay extra car prices to buy electric vehicles.
Lu Hanmin, the election committee of the Democratic League, believes that although the government has introduced the first registration tax and some bonus schemes to encourage the purchase of electric vehicles, it is only a drop in the bucket for the promotion of a large number of commercial electric vehicles with high prices.
He suggested that the government provide multi-dimensional financial support, such as tax incentives, direct subsidies for the purchase of electric vehicles, and electricity subsidies.
In terms of supporting facilities, the "Green Transportation Survey 2022" shows that if the parking lot has enough charging facilities, it will also help people to use electric vehicles; however, there are still insufficient charging stations in Hong Kong.
At present, there are 5,283 charging facilities available to the public in Hong Kong, which means that every 8.5 vehicles have to share one charging facility; in addition to the insufficient number, the performance of charging devices also has great room for improvement, and only 961 of them can be used within 30 minutes There are 80% fast chargers, 2871 medium-speed chargers that take 3-4 hours to fully charge, and the remaining 1451 "turtle chargers" that take 13 hours to fully charge.
But in Shenzhen, which has 191,000 new energy vehicles, there are already 120,000 charging piles.
Election Committee member Lin Xiaolu pointed out that in addition to charging facilities, it is also necessary to provide reasonable distribution of regional maintenance and battery maintenance services.
Lin Zhensheng, a member of the Election Committee of the Federation of Labor Federation, expressed the same expectation. He pointed out that the government has not disclosed the specific number of electric vehicle maintenance technicians-although the authorities have stated in the "Hong Kong Electric Vehicle Popularization Roadmap" that they will cooperate with tertiary institutions and the industry , to cultivate more electric vehicle maintenance talents, but so far no training indicators and timetable have been explained.
Lam Chun-sing is worried that the supply of electric vehicle maintenance services may be in short supply in the future, which will affect the public's confidence in purchasing electric vehicles.
In the face of all kinds of commonplace issues, the Secretary for the Environment and Ecology, Xie Zhanhuan, just repeated the goals mentioned in the "Hong Kong Electric Vehicle Popularization Roadmap" in his concluding speech, including that the government will reduce the review time of the green transportation development strategy from the past The five-year plan has been shortened to three years, and the "EV Housing Estate Charging Subsidy Scheme" launched by the government has now received applications from more than 600 housing estates, covering more than 120,000 charging facilities, and is confident that it will reach 15 by 2025. ten thousand.
The government announced that the "Easy Charging Subsidy Scheme for EV Housing Estates" will increase by 1.5 billion yuan, with a total of 3.5 billion yuan to assist about 140,000 parking spaces in about 700 existing private residential buildings in Hong Kong to install electric vehicle charging infrastructure. Half eligible parking spaces.
(File photo/Photo by Ou Jiale)
Legislative work lags behind
, hydrogen bus fails to hit the road
In addition to electric vehicles, lawmakers are also concerned about the slow development of hydrogen energy vehicles.
In July last year, Citybus introduced the first hydrogen energy bus in Hong Kong; however, due to the delay in the introduction of laws to regulate hydrogen energy by the Hong Kong government, hydrogen buses have not been able to go on the road.
Many congressmen urged the government to amend relevant laws to loosen the application of hydrogen energy vehicles as soon as possible, so as to avoid repeating the mistakes of electric vehicles lagging behind the international situation.
Liang Meifen, a member of the election committee of the Democratic League, has served as the founding chairman of the Environmental Promotion Association for more than ten years.
She said that future development cannot stop at the promotion of electric buses. The authorities need to think about the application of other new energy sources such as hydrogen vehicles, and give a timetable, roadmap and sufficient resources.
She reiterated that it is difficult to promote the popularization and application of new energy vehicles with the power of the Environmental Protection Agency alone. Different departments must be mobilized to strengthen coordination in order to effectively formulate and successfully implement an interlocking roadmap.
Liao Zhenxin, deputy director of the Transport and Logistics Bureau, also repeated the same old tune in his concluding speech, saying that the Transport Department has launched the "Transportation Strategy Study", and plans to put forward preliminary recommendations for the study in the second half of this year. It is expected that the transport strategy will be announced in 2025 The blueprint; and the authorities will carefully consider different factors to "tear down the walls and loosen the barriers" for green transportation, including the application of hydrogen vehicles.
In addition to the slow progress in improving supporting facilities and laws and regulations, even after the construction is completed, there are still many details of transportation planning that need to be adjusted urgently after it is put into use.
Election Committee member Chen Peiliang reminded that we need to pay attention to the uniqueness of the operation mode of public transport in Hong Kong. For example, the driving route is relatively long, and more than 90% of the existing franchised buses are double-decker buses, while the flying capacity and passenger capacity of electric buses are not as good as the original ones. Buses - This means that the bus companies need additional vehicles and drivers to maintain the original service, which is believed to be costly.
In response, Liao Zhenxin pointed out that currently there are not many models of electric double-decker buses suitable for use in Hong Kong. The actual operational performance, reliability and large-scale use of electric double-decker buses in Hong Kong still need to be further tested.
Whether it is the promotion of electric vehicles and other new energy vehicles, or the deployment of charging facilities and driving routes, it is closely related to the level of urban public transportation planning. The development of green transportation cannot be obtained by calculating the number and proportion of new energy vehicles. process.
Just as the promotion of the use of electric vehicles requires the real estate and construction industries to cooperate with the construction and layout of charging infrastructure, the coordination and cooperation of various departments can improve the operation mode of the entire transportation.
It is a pity that the policy attitude of the SAR Government in terms of urban planning has always been relatively conservative and passive.
For example, in the "Electric Vehicle Popularization Roadmap" released in 2021, the policy on electric commercial vehicles is only in the "experimental" stage, and except for electric public minibuses, which are expected to start experiments in 2023, single-decker buses, The pilot program for taxis, vans and other vehicles doesn't even give an approximate timeline.
The construction of the so-called "smart city" also stops at the blueprint.