Yes we can

Yes we can set up a feasibility study

There were two speeches given on Wednesday by inspiring men with grey-speckled hair trying to tackle the crises that face their territories, and improve their environmental credentials. In one speech of less than an hour, US President Barack Obama vowed to cut oil subsidies, confirmed plans for a “cap and trade” carbon emissions scheme, promised to cut overall US carbon emissions by 83 percent by 2050, promised an additional 15 billion US dollars a year for clean technology and pledged to overhaul farm subsidies for agribusiness (this in a speech where he also promised to slash the deficit, overhaul the healthcare system, stop kids dropping out of school and cure cancer). Meanwhile, the world’s attention was focused on Hong Kong’s financial secretary John Tsang’s budget speech, where he took close to two hours to… set up a feasibility study on the use of electric cars in Hong Kong, an industry that is apparently quietly thriving:

76. Through the research efforts of local universities, some local companies have started to produce electric vehicles for sale in the UK market.

Indeed. The narcissistically-named MyCar was developed in Hong Kong and has now gone on sale in the UK, as the SCMP reports:

The MyCar was unveiled in Britain in January with a sticker price of £8,995 (HK$99,824). It comes in seven colours including pearl white and metallic green. The two-seater EV, made from fibreglass-reinforced plastic body panels, has a maximum speed of 64km/h and can travel 112km on a full charge. It takes six to eight hours to completely power the car.

No chance of a midnight booty-call then… So far, MyCar has only managed to sell four of the vehicles to eco-concious Britain (slightly distracted by impending financial collapse). So will Hong Kong provide

The fastest milkfloat in the west

a possible market for the Made in Hong Kong souped-up milkfloat? No. “not because of safety issues but because ‘there is no such thing as a microcar in Hong Kong’. In other words, there is no classification that covers such a vehicle and would allow for its licensing,” reports David Wilson. Genius — a bureacratic problem getting in the way of progress in HK. But hopefully this will all be overturned by John Tsang’s laserbeam-like focus. (It is worth pointing out that Tsang also found time in his speech to extend the registration tax waiver on electric car for another five years. This has been in place since 1994. Total private electric cars registered in HK? 31).

We will examine the feasibility of providing re-charging facilities in government multi-storey car parks and explore ways of encouraging the business sector, including property developers and private car park operators, to set up such facilities. I will lead a steering committee to study the wider use of electric vehicles in Hong Kong.

If ever there was a sign of mustache-man being serious about this — and not other green initiatives he mentioned such as the refreshed efforts to green buildings (the 123rd straight mention in a HK leader’s speech) — then this was it. “Let’s not let the bureaucrats stifle this one, I am going to steer this electric car steering committee so we can come up with some pretty strong recommendations in the next few years.” Again, the sentiment is admirable, but as is so often the case with Hong  Kong reform, the pace of change is glacial, or about as quick as the MyCar going full throttle, or whatever it is that electric cars do.

I blogged earlier about electric cars, and the brilliant Shai Agassi’s efforts to introduce systems of recharge stations in Denmark, Israel and Hawaii. Get the guy on the phone, give him some money and let’s get it started. Hong Kong is a perfect choice for electric cars — and buses — as you do not have to drive very far, and our biggest pollution problem in terms of health is roadside emissions. Think what a boost it would provide the city’s retailers if you could walk around Causeway Bay on a Saturday and not have to breath in the exhaust emissions that are held in place by the canyon effect of giant skyscrapers. Even efreak might be tempted to buy some eco-friendly garment from GOD…

Adam Smith ponders the "Wealth of HK Electric"

Last year, Hong Kong was in a desperate tiz about inflation (how long ago that seems now) and the city’s wise leaders decided to introduce a 300 HK dollar subsidy to every household’s monthly electricity bill to help them cope with the price of rice jumping 50 percent. Now you do not have to be Adam Smith to work out that this is a disincentive for people to turn down their air-conditioning, switch to energy efficient lightbulbs or sit in the dark. So what happened next?

Honkies used more terajoules between September and November than they have at any point in the previous seven years. They super-sized their electricity use. They left the air conditioning on when they went to work, they let the Filipino maid wallow in her jacuzzi all day and they used the freezer to cool the kitchen. Like a Lan Kwai Fong husband-hunter hearing

Translation: Binge drinkers welcome

that it was four-drinks-for-one at Stormies if you wear a low-cut top, they went on a binge. Great news if you are a CLP or Hongkong Electric shareholder, but less good news if you are interested in stopping their coal-burning power stations spewing out carbon dioxode to gently heat the atmosphere.

Now according to the HK Observatory it was one of the warmest autumns on record (I wonder why), but subsidies just make people’s decision to turn on their inefficient a/c units that much easier. What the government has failed to explain is that the subsidy can be carried forward (until August 2014 or when the account closes according to details buried away on HK Electric’s website), so it could have been an incentive to save. But they instead gave the impression it was a short-term measure that would only last until August next year, so people think that if they do not use it, they waste a free handout. Now have you ever seen Hongkongers scramble for free stuff being handed out near the MTR?

Is it Beverley Hills? No, dear, it's Zhuhai.

Situated just across the border from Macau, about an hour from Hong Kong by ferry, efreak made the visit with Old China hack Mark O’Neill, who teaches a course in international journalism at the Zhuhai campus of Hong Kong Baptist University. Zhuhai was what China cliche-lovers would call a “sleepy fishing village” (it had the same population as Oxford) before it had the fortune to be chosen as one of the special economic zones in the early 1980s, like Shenzhen and other southern cities that became economic powerhouses of the new China. But Zhuhai was different thanks to its incredible mayor, Liang Guangda.

Nicknamed “Big Cannon” (easy ladies), Liang wanted to create a city unlike the get-polluted-and-rich-quick model of Shenzhen. He wanted Zhuhai to become a serious international city (see O’Neill’s excellent article on the city in Asia Sentinel). So he encouraged universities to open franchises here. When one institution, Zhongshan Univeristy from Guangzhou, declined, Liang went ahead and built the campus and gave them a 100 million yuan. After this, the gracious souls at Zhongshan kindly agreed to teach the students. He also built great parks, a golf course, the international airport and the formula one track (but he annoyed Beijing in the process, so the last two are hardly ever used). All this was funded by the kind of highly-leveraged wizardry that has fallen out of vogue in recent months, and now the city is saddled with an enormous pile of debt.

Not a bad place to get some learnin'

But despite the debt mountain, Liang’s legacy is clear (he is now retired, after annoying Beijing one too many times). The city is, by Chinese standards, beautiful with tree-lined avenues and an incredible sea-front, which puts Hong Kong’s dire efforts to shame. He shunned much of the low-budget filth-spewing factories that ruin southern China’s air quality and insisted on top notch computer companies which would encourage the city’s graduates from the six universities — the campuses of which are located in an incredible mountain setting — to stay and develop the city. And so the air is far cleaner than its near neighbours.

A brave visionary making an enormous difference

However, there are signs that some of his good work is being undone and the city is becoming more famous as a seedy tourist destination and is also getting ready for the futile Zhuhai-Macau-HongKong bridge. But his example shows, as ever, that brave visionaries can make an enormous difference. The city is far from an eco-model, but it beats the filthy skies of Dongguan and the pipe dreams of grandiose publicity schemes such as Dongtan.

I'm sure there was a river here somewhere

People who like certainty, like journalists, get frustrated that scientists often couch their assessments in “contributing factor”, “high probability of linkage” and “if you give me some more funding I can find out the answer in three years time.” I will bet all the money in my pockets, we will have another “once in a century” heatwave near Melbourne within the next 10 years. So please revisit in 2019 for that four HK dollars and a piece of fluff…

In China a drought has left four million people without enough water, and there is even a crisis in southwest Yunnan province, where it does not stop raining all summer and is supplied by freshwater from the gigantic Tibetan plateau glaciers. This is also the worst drought “for 50 years”, but there has still not been much mention of climate change. The BBC said harsh weather has become more common in recent years, but that is about it. China’s answer is more irrigation and speeding up the preposterous South-North diversion project, but as Ma Jun author or “China’s Water Crisis” says, unless you conserve the existing water better, speed up reforestation and stop polluting you are heading for disaster, no matter what engineering miracles you can conjure…

And while the human crisis always dominates news coverage, perhaps rightly, the issue of what is turning these freakish events into the commonplace is missed. Journalism comes in for a lot of criticism on the environmental issues — see “How the press bungles its coverage of climate economics” — and this is a good example of where the horror of climate change is happening, and people are witness to it and could be convinced to make changes in their lives, or more importantly, their governments…

In Hong Kong, we have had some pretty freakish weather of late. It has not rained for months and today the temperature is 23 degrees Celcius (don’t tell Britain) in the middle of February. Difficult to find people complaining, mind. The reservoirs are still running at greater capacity than this time last year (mainly due to the freakish flooding in the summer). So what are the signs of climate change in the territory, said to be so at risk from rising sea levels, that people might actually care about as they slap on some more suncream?

A visit to Mai Po Watland Reserve, run by WWF and recently closed as they found one bird with, shock horror, flu in the middle of winter, shows one example. According to Bena Smith, who helps run the reserve, migratory patterns are changing all the time. The Common Shell Duck has proved the danger of making assumptions when you are naming creatures. As recently as 10 years ago, hundreds of the ducks made it to Mai Po as part of their winter commute. This year there were four. Other species have disappeared altogether, whilst others have multiplied, Smith said. Climate change is the only explanation, Smith believes. If you do not need to fly as far south for some warmth and TLC from WWF types, why bother?

A vision of Causeway Bay island circa 2100

The other sign I have seen is at Tai O, the fishing village on SW Lantau built on stilts. Last summer the island suffered terrible landslides because of the severe storms and if you live in the “Venice of SW Lantau” as some tourist guides inevitably calls it, you are in real trouble. The answer to this crisis is not for all of us to live on longer and longer sticks, in case you were asking… Other signs of climate change in HK much appreciated.

Jaws was less scary when only skin

At the end of a magnificent hike around SW Lantau coast — if you ignore the mounds of rubbish that spoil some of the beaches and paths on the western side of the island — we reached the village of Tai O on the far western tip of Hong Kong. Tai O is famous for its houses suspended on sticks, and tourists who bustled around the main street on Saturday were also offered the chance to try various dried fish, including an entire shark’s skin, which is unusual as suppliers of the world’s most overrated food, Shark’s Fin Soup, usually just pick up the wonky-toothed fish from the ocean, slice off its tail and then drop it back in to slowly and painfully bleed to death.

Tai O is a struggling economy, its traditional industries of salt and fishing in decline, quite possibly because it is almost directly in line to the huge wads of pollution oozing down from the Pearl River Delta. But for a while it became quite prosperous, as it was a favourite haven for what would now be called recession-proof industries like piracy, people smuggling and escaping Communists dictatorships. Unsurprisingly, with all these potential new customers flooding in the world’s local bank HSBC has a tiny Tai O branch, which sits rather incongruously among the shacks and dried squid sellers.

HSBC -- the bank that likes to say "green"

HSBC, or Hongkong bank or “the bank” as it is known in these parts, has in recent years beefed up its green credentials. It has made a promise to become carbon neutral, it has made its largest ever corporate donation to charities including the Climate Group and WWF, it has pledged to reduce its use of energy and water and its production of waste. Its projects focus on forests and adapting rivers to the already-seen effects of warming on water supplies and rivers. It even asks you if you want a receipt when you are finished at the ATM, and if you don’t take one — which you shouldn’t — it says “Thanks for loving green”, whatever that means.

But as with any major corporation, some of it has not quite got through. This week they sent me, by email, an offer that would give me up to a 6 percent rebate on buying petrol from Caltech gas stations. Making fuel cheaper is not a very good way of making people use less of it, as any oil boss, petrol pump attendant or A-level economics dropout will tell you. I am sure it was just an aberration by those very keen people at the marketing department who wanted something nice to offer grumbling bank users who are worried about their dividend…

Global slowdown. Could it sink Tai O?

In addition, HSBC has the green credit card. For the launch of this snazzy item, they even flew over impeccably green-credentialed actor — he drives a hybrid and hangs out with Al Gore, don’t you know — Leonardo DeCaprio (You would have thought that Leo might have been in favour of global warming as it would mean fewer of those pesky glaciers about, raising the possibility of a Titanic sequel) For every 1,000 dollars you spend on this credit card, HSBC will donated 1 dollars to building outdoor, green spaces in schools. This is frankly, pretty pathetic.

It also gives you the chance to get some free tat — which I will be exploring soon if all my points have not long disappeared — and the chance not to get any bills sent through the post. I applied for this service months ago and now get emails about my account, but still get gumph through the post… The petrol service offer (see above) is also promoted as a green offer, which is ridiculous…

There is no doubt that HSBC are doing some good work, but they must make sure they do not fall into the greenwashing mangle and come out a manky shade of purple, a bit like the sea off Lantau’s west coast…

‘Are you British’ he whispered, looking behind him  carefully.

‘Yes,’ I answered, suddenly and unexpectedly full of colonial guilt.

‘We need you to help us,’ he said, staring straight at me.

‘What? again?’ I should have said, instead, I said ‘Right?’

‘The Chinese are trying to kill us, we need you to come and save us. They are stealing all our water.’

It was a strange moment, for sure, and the man, who was relatively well-dressed and coherent in excellent English, was convincing. Obviously, I ignored him and carried on to Shek O where we chowed on some reasonably-priced spring rolls, but it came back to me the other day. And so I thought I would check it out, get the British navy involved and see into getting the Opium Wars started again, this time over water. And I wanted to learn about saving water for the efreak thing…

Would you believe it, turns out the loon in the bushes was completely wrong. We are actually stealing water from China. That is, if you call paying a huge wad of cash for water from Guangdong stealing. This be the history:

The Chinese stealing our water

Despite a string of water retention projects and huge reservoirs built by the Brits (including Plover Cove reservoir, see picture) in the early 1980s, HK started experiencing some water shortages and had to place water restrictions. Population had reached 5 million and, well, those coloonial cricket pitches wouldn’t water themselves. We were were already getting a hefty chunk of water from Dongjiang, a town in Guangdong with some clean supplies. But we wanted more, so we bought more and even built an 83 kilometre tunnel, and an aquaduct from the town so it did not mix in with that dirty Pearl River Delta Water or peasant spit. And also, our use of water slowed.

Was this because everyone in HK started taking showers instead of baths and getting less thirsty plants? Of course not. Instead, it was a byproduct of shipping all our factories over the border. As we know, they don’t worry about water supplies or treating the waste, they just dump it into the rivers and treat the fishes (see Ma Jun, “China’s Water Crisis” for more info)…

So the point is, Hong Kong is vulnerable to a change of mind across the border (although the government did sign a three year deal in December until 2011), so we should cut our water use so we are not even more beholden to the Commies, who also need the water themselves as they are busy polluting every body of water in the country. HK is also likely to be in real trouble when the effects of climate change kick-in and investors are circling the world looking for water opportunities, look at former oil man, T. Boone Pickens.

Who left the tap on?

At the moment, 70-80 percent of our water comes from Dongjiang, effectively making it our Saudi Arabia, while the rest comes from water we collect in the rainy season after it has washed away taxis in Sheung Wan. One interesting fact is that 80 percent of households use sea water to flush their toilets, so probably best to avoid washing your lettuce in your shitter, in case you were wondering.

So what can I do to reduce water use?  The water services department says I should cut shower times by two minutes (with a crappy boiler like mine, I already have to move pretty fast); turn off the tap while I am brushing teeh, soaping hands and shaving; wash fruits etc in a basin instead of under a tap; wash clothes only with full loads (will tell the cleaner. this efreak stuff is hard on her), take showers instead of baths (or stop washing altogether). All these seem pretty basic, Ask Umbra over at Grist has a tougher regime. Stop flushing your toilet so often, and look into the possibility of peeing in the shower:

From an energy-saving (and climate) perspective, standing in the shower to pee is a poor idea unless you are efficiently multitasking (lathering plus peeing). And remember, not flushing is a good option. That’s my two cents. A third cent: pee in a bucket and pour it onto your compost pile for some high-nitrogen fun!

Mrs efreak-to-be saves the planet

Mrs efreak-to-be has her own approach to conserving water. She has not watered any of her plants for six months, good on her… More updates on how I got on, and whether my flat stinks of urine now I am not flushing so much will follow…

For those of you who are not part of the no-doubt imminent stampede to Dymocks to grab a copy of BEEWGBAKTAF, as I have pointlessly dubbed it, here is the summary.

Central Plaza. A needle in the eye for efficiency

Unsurprisingly for a heading-toward-post-industrial economy (only achieved, of course, by shipping the 55,000 crud-spewing factories over the border), more than 50 percent of Hong Kong’s energy consumption comes through buildings and that percentage is growing rapidly. The other major chunks are transport and the few remaining factories. So it seems pretty obvious where all the effort should be focused: cutting costs in buildings.And the government are making some noises about it (Sir Bowtie said he would legislate for compliance with building coded ‘as soon as possible’).

Air conditioning accounts on its own accounts for 30 percent of the total energy consumption in HK. Despite this, there is no compulsory efficiency standard for a/c units and HK is the only economy in the 11 surveyed for the book which does not have a standard for appliances, instead it has a voluntary system for 17 different appliances, which is a bit like me having a voluntary system for the number of hours I decide to work:

“Sorry boss, I know I am aiming to work 37 hours this week, but the new boxset of The Wire has just arrived so I will only work four.

“No problem son, take it easy. We will just hope those widgets will sell themselves. They never have before, but maybe all that will change now…” my boss might say, if he was a stupid Lancastrian.

In the various areas of building efficiency that could be tackled such as lighting, the outside of buildings etc… HK has a mixture of compulsory and voluntary methods and a follow-the-leader approach (ie ‘We have built this great building, what do you think?’ ‘I think I will build the same offensive unit of 500 sq feet shoeboxes that will stop any sea breeze cooling the sweaty city and blowing away roadside pollution, but thanks for asking.’). The building assessment is called, with a great deal of wit, the Building Environmental Assessment Method (BEAM) and has been given to around 150 buildings, which is barely a drop in the puddle caused by the faulty a/c unit.

So it was interesting to see a report in the SCMP saying that after criticims that some of the green buildings were not that green, but seemed to have been greenwashed we are going to get something called the Green Building Council. The current council is made of people from the Business Environment Council, the architecture sector and developers. So who will make up this new body that will terrify developers, builders and other members of the cartel-controlled vested interest into cleaning up their buildings?

The new Green Building Council was expected to transform the labelling scheme into a more effective and well-recognised one, Mr Wong said, adding that it would gain financial support from the Construction Industry Council – a statutory body representing the construction sector and one of the council’s founding members.

Other founding members include the Business Environment Council, the HK-Beam Society, and the institutes for architects, landscape architects, surveyors and planners.

 

Well that should really shake it up.

Until the government introduces standards, you will not compel the town’s bored arhitects, engineers and planners to produce green buildings and at the same time, inspire them to create generally more exciting edifices. One disillusioned former architect said to me that HK was bereft of inspiring new buildings — “Everyone talks about the HSBC building, but that was built 20 years ago”. The funny thing is, tough standards can inspire creativity, in the same way that the tight format of the sonnet has produced some of poetry’s greatest moments, because it focuses the mind. But such a move seems very unlikely with the power of the developers in HK. So I will continue, with a heavy heart, to wear a blanket in my office in the middle of summer and take two sweaters to the cinema…

HK Environment Secretary Edward Yau

The day was a chaotic, but excellent mix of high-end science (what the hell is a cohort?), interactive groups fighting over ideas and on-stage panels pushing a point of view. Efreak would have liked a bit more to-and-fro, especially between an angry crowd and Buzz Lightyear-jawed Environment Secretary Edward Yau, who made a brief, nod-heavy appearance, before scuttling away.

Yau made a speech full of warm words, but others pointed out there was plenty missing. Still no recognition that there was a link between poor air quality and health (although chief executive Donald Tsang did say in 2007, it was a “matter of life and death”). And he said the never-ending process to introduce new air standards would have to look at the “priorities, pace and price” of any changes. This is prattle, as an alliteration enthusiast might say.

Yau’s comments came about five minutes after top beard John Watson, from the Desert Research Institute showed there is no overall economic cost to improving air quality and tightening emissions standards. It also came about five minutes before Yau’s heavily right angled head was bobbing up and down agreeing with a panellist who said there were plenty of business opportunities from greening up your economy (not to mention the necessity of competing with Singapore to attract top talent).

Pollution, what pollution?

But perhaps Yau’s most telling body language came with any mention of the Hedley Index. This is the project, set up by public health guru Anthony Hedley and peer-reviewed, to create an ongoing ticker to show how many people are dying prematurely each year in Hong Kong and the economic cost of poor air quality (so far 29 have popped their clogs after smoking on the particulates of Asia’s World City).

When one young urchin who was presenting the findings of a group suggested the Hedley Index should be published alongside the Hang Seng Index, Yau’s jaw tightened into a perfect square with barely concealed anger. I get the sense the government is not a fan of Prof Hedley and his wild theories such as air pollution damages the health of the population that has to breath it in every day…

The country has undoubtedly strengthened its environmental laws, such as increasing the powers of its environmental agencies, but powers of enforcement remain weak. For example, an investigation by the Ministry of Environmental Protection into the country’s 500 largest enterprises found that more than 40% had failed to adopt the necessary environmental abatement measures they promised in their environmental impact reports. Also, the ministry found that the number of reported incidents of serious pollution is increasing by an annual rate of 30%, with one event now being reported every two days.

Optimists would say that the fact more incidents are being reported is an improvement, in the same way that if you don’t know the extent of the murder problem in a city then how do you tackle such serious crime? But without leadership from top companies who made promises, what hopes of greening the worst polluters further down the food chain…

The country has undoubtedly strengthened its environmental laws, such as increasing the powers of its environmental agencies, but powers of enforcement remain weak. For example, an investigation by the Ministry of Environmental Protection into the country’s 500 largest enterprises found that more than 40% had failed to adopt the necessary environmental abatement measures they promised in their environmental impact reports. Also, the ministry found that the number of reported incidents of serious pollution is increasing by an annual rate of 30%, with one event now being reported every two days.

Optimists would say that the fact more incidents are being reported is an improvement, in the same way that if you don’t know the extent of the murder problem in a city then how do you tackle such serious crime? But without leadership from top companies who made promises, what hopes of greening the worst polluters further down the food chain…