Li Jiachao, Chief Executive Of Hong Kong: Green Environmental Protection In His Policy Address

 

Livable Hong Kong, regional environment

The regional affairs Co ordinating working group, led by the Deputy Chief Secretary for administration, has been cracking down on more than 600 black spots since mid August and has strengthened daily cleaning at about 4000 locations. Future work includes:

(I) establish a "standard action mode" to effectively deal with different environmental hygiene problems, rationalize the division of labor and processes among departments, and implement them in all districts;

(II) a comprehensive review of the powers and penalties of the existing environmental health legislation. In the first stage, it is proposed to increase the current fixed penalty of $1500 for littering and shop blocking. The Legislative Council will be consulted within this year. Other legislative amendments will be proposed in the middle of next year; and

(III) beautify public space and optimize street landscape, including planting flowers and trees, beautifying road signs, improving street facilities, etc.

In order to improve the odor problem of seawater on both sides of the Victoria Harbour, we will regularly monitor the odor at the outlet of the stormwater channel and correct the wrong connection of the sewage channel. The goal is to reduce the sewage volume by half by the end of 2024 for the outlets with serious odor problems in some areas.

Towards carbon neutrality

In order to halve the total carbon emissions from the 2005 level by 2035, and achieve the goal of carbon neutrality by 2050, we must step up various carbon reduction actions

(I) energy conservation - more than 60% of carbon emissions come from electricity facilities in buildings. The government's goal is to improve the overall energy performance of government buildings and facilities by more than 6% in 2024-25. We will accelerate the construction of regional cooling systems in new development areas (including the "northern metropolitan area") to save energy. We are in the process of amending legislation to include more household appliances in the mandatory energy efficiency labelling scheme. By then, the proportion of household appliances under the scheme to the total energy consumption of residential buildings will rise from 50% to about 80%;

(II) promoting green transport - the government will stop new registration of fuel and hybrid private cars on or before 2035. In the next three years, we will provide charging facilities in an additional 7000 government building parking spaces. In order to accelerate the low-carbon transformation of the transportation industry, we will try out a new generation of electric taxis, hydrogen fuel cell double decker buses and heavy vehicles next year, and complete two tasks by 2025 or before. First, the roadmap for promoting electric public transport and commercial vehicles will be announced; Second, formulate a long-term strategy for the use of hydrogen energy in land transportation. We will also put in about 700 electric buses and 3000 electric taxis by the end of 2027; and

(III) promoting national waste reduction - in order to achieve the goal of "zero waste landfill" by 2035, we will make every effort to promote the nationwide waste reduction and classified recovery, and accelerate the development of modern incineration power generation facilities. In addition to actively preparing for the municipal solid waste charge to be implemented as soon as next year, a number of new measures have been implemented, including

(a) a bill will be introduced early next year to control disposable plastic tableware and other plastic products;

(2) to study legislation to require large-scale housing estates and estates and single residential buildings with large number of households to collect recyclables by category and hand them over to recyclers for disposal;

(3) full speed construction of the first modern incineration and power generation facility next to Shek Kwu Chau and the second planned to be located in Tseng Tsui, Tuen Mun, and to study the construction of more advanced facilities of the same type in the "northern metropolitan area"; And (4) to launch a pilot project on kitchen waste collection in public housing estates this year.

We will reconstitute the sustainable development committee into a new carbon neutral and sustainable development committee to advise on carbon reduction strategies.

In order to strengthen the cooperation between Guangdong, Hong Kong and Macao in dealing with climate change and air pollution prevention and control in the bay area, the government is preparing to build the air quality laboratory and meteorological monitoring super station in Hong Kong to provide regional air pollution and meteorological monitoring and forecasting services.