Hong Kong’s Standing with the Paris Agreement & Climate Action
Hong Kong is well-known for being an influential global financial hub, one of the most technologically advanced societies, placing 4th in the world HDI. However, despite this, The Paris Watch has awarded HK a grade of C towards achieving their climate change goals in accordance with The Paris Agreement. HK’s unique political powers as a Special Administrative Region of China and past colonial influences put it in a tight position regarding environmental priorities. Due to HK’s limited land resource, there is a lot of dependency placed on imports for agricultural, energy and consumerism purposes. However, HK being a coastal city, has a lot at stake with sea-level rise resulting from global warming, thus continuing with ambitious plans for carbon neutrality till 2050.
Yet this report highlights a few significant issues. 90% of HK’s electricity use is attributed to buildings, yet significant measures for retrofitting and incentivizing green buildings are yet to be seen. Furthermore, the lack of land resources presents the issue of lacking renewable energy real-estate, and many environmental conservationists oppose the tidal and offshore windfarm measures in place. Additional construction measures for carbon-intensive projects, such as expansion of the HK Airport with a 3rd runway to accommodate for the increasing number of imports, as well as transportation expansion for the Greater Bay Area initiative, challenge the little progress HK has seen towards achieving lowered carbon emissions. There are also major concerns about the leadership position of the region, and the resulting effect it will have on adhering to environmental objectives.
Additionally, HK struggles the most with the 12th SDG of responsible consumerism, damage which has been exacerbated due to the pandemic situation. Despite the small size and population of 7 million, the carbon intensity of HK is significant compared to larger nations such as Kenya and Singapore, indicating that individual lifestyle and consumption behaviour change is key to lowering HK’s CO2 emissions.
Positive effects that have been realized from increased climate action pressure on HK are the start of a 200 million HKD Green Tech Fund, land conservation measures by national parks, increased actions from energy providers such as CLP and HK Electric towards promoting EVs and renewable energy. Despite these efforts, finding energy solutions are another major contributor to bringing HK a step closer to carbon neutrality. However, the deeply bureaucratic and financial vested interests of the energy industry in HK bring a challenge to achieving these goals, which are documented well by HK-based journalist Stuart Heaver. According to his research, despite HK’s potential to generate more renewable energy than Singapore, HK committed 1/7th (3%) of renewable energy targets compared to Singapore (20%). This is due to political investments in the emerging nuclear sector of nearby China, which facilitates a lot of the imports HK relies on.
Green finance is an initiative by the HK Monetary Authority to tackle such vested interests by providing monetary incentives towards sustainable markets, however an emergence of this trend is yet to be realized once ESG assets in APAC become more popular.
The uncertain political atmosphere in an advanced and previously secure society presents an unparalleled circumstance, with unclear political agendas in the energy monopoly threatening HK’s previously just and incorruptible system.
Largely how HK will progress with its sustainable goals will rely on China’s, with the merging of 2047 scheduled. This timeframe is unsuitable, as it coincides very closely with target years, thus it is likely that the political authorities and leadership will be more concerned with power dynamics than implementing climate solutions; however, the time also coincides with expiry of the global carbon budget, suggesting that HK must battle it’s sustainability alongside politics, otherwise 2047 will prove to be an extremely turbulent time frame.
HK, in the center of climate change, is a very complex problem of political leadership, resource management and immense potential. However, harvesting this potential is a matter of negotiations and cooperations between states, as well as individuals in the fight of democracy, to choose the most optimal path towards reducing conflict.
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