Sustainable Living Hong Kong

I guess the answer to the question in the last post – whether Hong Kong’s bureaucrats are ready for new thinking and new standards to cut our carbon emissions – is a definite “No”.

The award of a design-build-operate contract for the Kai Tak district cooling system, originally due in January this year, has been scrapped as tenderers have all priced the risk more than the benefit of taking on the project and returned tenders that the government considered too expensive.

As a result, it has been forced to make a few changes to its procurement approach. It is now assuming responsibility for the capital cost of laying the pipes for the chiller plants, leaving the prospective contractor with just the responsibility of designing the system, building the plant rooms and operating the system for eight years, with an option to extend the period by another eight.

And whereas it had insisted in the past that private sector users would be free too choose whether or not to sign on, it is now considering making it compulsory for every building in Kai Tak to use it, with stipulations in land lease conditions being one approach under consideration. The reason given for the change of heart was environmental protection and energy efficiency, but it would be obvious to industry players that this is the only realistic way of reducing the risk of the system failing to make a healthy return within the franchise period.

There is in fact another way of reducing the risk and enhancing the system’s profitability: by allowing the operator to sell electricity generated by the system as well. But this is not contemplated because electricity supply in Hong Kong is provided by the two electricity companies, and that’s it. In other parts of the world people have the incentive to improve energy efficiency and adopt renewable energy because local districts are allowed to develop small-scale cogeneration systems or standalone installations capable of generating surplus electricity for sale back to the grid. In Hong Kong, though, even solar panels have to be installed and run by the two electricity firms; if you install solar heaters on your roof, you run the risk of the Buildings guys prosecuting you for erecting an illegal structure.

The district cooling system is a good idea that can be even better, but institutional rigidity has proved too hard to surmount.

Green Sense is inviting Hong Kongers to do without air-conditioning for one night (Wednesday September 29) to reduce our carbon emissions.

The idea is to switch off from 7:00 pm on Sep 29 to 7:00 am on Sep 30, and the universities plus a number of organisations have already agreed to back the campaign by calling upon 20,000 families and 5,000 students who live in dormitories to participate.

According to Green Sense, air-conditioning accounts for 60% of our energy use during the summer months of July and August. It estimates a 1hp air-conditioner that consumes 0.8-1 kWh of electricity running continuously for eight hours generates 5.6 kg of carbon dioxide.

With any luck, the weather will have cooled a bit by then so participants will find it easier to cope without air-conditioning, but climate change has been getting so bad so quickly the weather doesn’t cool till we’re well into November or even December these days. At the same time, increasing development density and the wrong building codes (the Overall Thermal Transmittance Value requirement leading to curtain wall buildings that reflect heat onto streets) have created urban heat islands that force people to turn to air-conditioning for relief. Worse yet, people have become used to Arctic air-conditioning thanks to routine excessive use at home, in the office, on the bus and in the shopping malls.

The NGO calls for people to switch to more energy-efficient air-conditioners, but will this be enough? It’s time for Hong Kong to rethink building services so that, instead of separate systems – and standards – for air-conditioning, hot water, etc, there are integrated systems capable of recovering heat from air-conditioners to heat water, for example. Or micro-hydro plants that capture the energy from water and wastewater flowing in and out of tall buildings to generate electricity. Are our designers and bureaucrats ready for this?

Hong Kong’s civil society is quite alert to the scams perpetrated by the government but, alas, also prone to being co-opted.

The government now knows the trick by heart. It works like this: when the public objects to a project, it would pick a detail or two of the criticism to do a bit of work on and offer a “public consultation” on its “response”. Once the “comments” are in, the government will then go ahead with the scheme, saying how it reflects public “aspirations”, or whatever. We may then stutter, angry at having been tricked, and yell about fake consultations at the next protest, but it works every time.

Remember how the public objected to the waste of taxpayers’ money on building a grandiose government office block on a prime waterfront site, on land reclaimed from the harbour? The government picked on the objection to obstruction of visual and air flow and promised to reduce the height of the building and ensure ventilation, then staged exhibitions of the revised submissions from the architects, with multiple choice comment cards: you could pick A, B or C, but you couldn’t say the whole idea of wasting all that money was wrong-headed in the first place. Checkmate.

What about the proposal to reclaim more land from the harbour to build another expressway? The public objected to the Central-Wanchai Bypass, with the more knowledgeable pointing out that it’d been demonstrated everywhere that more roads meant more cars and calling for the introduction of electronic road pricing. But the government picked on the objection that the waterfront should be a public amenity and not a road for speeding cars, and offered a choice of two options for a landscaped ventilation building for the public to choose from. It would probably get away with it too, except that this time it’s not so much the public but the developers behind the IFC that are upset about their expensive investment being blotted by this eyesore standing between their building and the harbour.

And now the West Kowloon Cultural District. I still remember the uproar that greeted Norman Foster’s initial design and trudging up the steps of the Fringe Club to view the alternative proposals put forward for enlivening the cultural landscape of the whole of Hong Kong, by having three key centres of cultural activities on both sides of the harbour. It made sense: after all, the Royal Opera House, V&A, Tate Modern, British Museum, National Portrait Gallery, etc etc, aren’t all located at the Barbican Centre. They’re scattered all over London. And they were built on the foundations of a culturally informed city where Paul McCartney could busk (in disguise) in the Tube and jugglers are free to amuse themselves as well as spectators without being arrested by the police, as one was in Hong Kong recently, just before the government went ahead with a “six-month pilot scheme” to promote street performances, something artists and entertainers in London have been doing since at least the 19th century.

But instead of heeding the cry against this gigantic waste of public money, the government’s at it again, focusing on the objection to the real estate element in the initial design in order to push through with the legacy-obsessed concept of creating a cultural ‘destination’. Having got three big-name architects to come up with fancy proposals articulated with appealing spiel about ‘connectivity’, ‘diversity’, ‘inclusiveness’, etc etc, it now wants the public to effectively endorse the waste of money by visiting the exhibitions of the proposals and picking their favourites.

I have just a couple of questions: what do the government and the three architects know about climate change? How much carbon emissions will be generated by the construction of the West Kowloon Cultural District? What is the purpose of the cultural district: to serve up cultural events as consumer products for the elite, or to foster the creativity of the general public?

Climate change is likely to impose worse impact by the time this project was completed. Look how food prices have risen as a result of the flooding in China and the wild fires in Russia; when ordinary Hong Kongers can’t cope with food price inflation due to climate change, will the government say: let them eat cake while we build this edifice?

Australian entrepreneur Dick Smith has set up a A$1 million prize for anyone below the age of 30 who can come up with the best solution to stop capitalist society’s addiction to consumption and population growth.

The Wilberforce Award is named after the 19th century English politician William Wilberforce, who campaigned for the abolition of slavery despite warnings that it would lead to economic collapse.

As some of us are already all too aware, Mr Smith believes the planet, with its finite resources, cannot cope with the exponential expansion of the human population and, if nothing is done to reverse it, human civilisation will collapse. He said he was looking for a person brave enough to go against the grain of growing populations. “We need our Wilberforce winner to abolish the slavery of today, which is to abolish the ridiculous addiction to exponential growth.”

Potential winners do not have to apply. Instead, Mr Smith said he would monitor the global media to look for someone who has made a “significant contribution” to the discussion and “who also becomes famous through his or her contribution to the debate”.

The award is to be announced in one year’s time. To be eligible, one has to:

• be under the age of 30
• believe in maintaining stable population numbers and a sustainable consumption of energy and resources
• come up with and communicate successfully alternatives to consumption-driven economic growth
• get noticed in the media for campaigning on such issues.

Watch Mr Smith explain the prize below.

The Wall Street Journal Asia weekend edition reviewed the Porsche Cayenne S Hybrid, proclaiming “Porsche takes a big step into being green.”  Just how big a step is that?

The Cayenne is a top-of-the line SUV which would normally be called a gas guzzler/emblem of conspicuous consumption. By using hybrid technology in the engine and adding electronic controls to cut fuel drain, the Cayenne hybrid achieves a 25-30% improvement in fuel economy, or around 23/26 MPG city/highway (9-10 litres per 100 km).  Porsche also boasts that the Cayenne hybrid reduces CO2 emissions to “just 193 g/km”.  This is significant, given that any other car with an engine larger than 4 litres will normally emit well over 200 and sometimes 300 g/km CO2.  These figures appear to be significant improvements indeed.

But, before you run out to buy the car in order to brush up your green credentials, do consider several factors which are conveniently disregarded in the WSJ write-up.

First, the environmental impacts of a vehicle include not just the fuel economy and CO2 emissions while operating, but the CO2 emissions and resources consumed in production.  The auto industry largely reports only on the CO2 emissions from their own facilities, but given that most auto parts have been outsourced to third party suppliers, it’s clear that a lot is excluded a priori.  Even under these conditions, the CO2 emitted in the auto brand’s own facilities is estimated to account for 15-20% of the auto’s total CO2 emissions over a life of 15 years.   The Cayenne Hybrid is five tons of steel –even a rough counting of the emissions from components and manufacturing come to much higher than just 20%.

Second, while the hybrid model emissions are an improvement upon the baseline 6-litre model, 193 g/km CO2 is still very high.  The EU is considering legislation which would put a cap on CO2 emissions of just 120 g/km for the majority of passenger vehicles. Non-hybrid sedans emit between 100 and 150 g/km.  Automakers argue that larger vehicles deserve a higher cap, which may be true when applied to buses and vans, but in the consumer segment, there are good reasons why choosing an SUV (over a sedan) is not a necessity, but rather an environmentally poor choice which should bear costs.

The US is the largest SUV market in the world, and it’s no surprise that US autos emit an average of 255 g/km CO2, compared to 130.8 g/km for Japan and 140 g/km for Europe.  Bringing these numbers down significantly requires that people steer clear of environmentally bad choices like SUVs, rather than looking to make marginal improvements on bad choices.  But this would be bad for Porsche, so they just don’t mention it. Indeed, any company that benefits from an economy in which rising consumption is good and in which happiness is defined in terms of possessions, would lose if it told consumers the truth about their choices.

Thus, we are subject to a constant stream of misinformation that peddles a fundamentally unsustainable product as something clean and green.  Don’t buy it.

It has taken humanity less than nine months to exhaust its ecological budget for the year, according to data from Global Footprint Network, a California-based environmental research organization.

Global Footprint Network calculates nature’s supply in the form of biocapacity, the amount of resources the planet regenerates each year, and compares that to human demand: the amount it takes to produce all the living resources we consume and absorb our carbon dioxide emissions.

Its data reveal that, as of August 21, humanity will have demanded all the ecological services – from filtering CO2 to producing the raw materials for food – that nature can provide this year.

From now until the end of the year, we will meet our ecological demand by depleting resource stocks and accumulating greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

“If you spent your entire annual income in nine months, you would probably be extremely concerned,” said Global Footprint Network President Mathis Wackernagel.

“The situation is no less dire when it comes to our ecological budget. Climate change, biodiversity loss, deforestation, water and food shortages – these are all clear signs that we can no longer finance our consumption on credit. Nature is foreclosing.”

What is Overshoot?

For most of human history, humanity has been able to live off of nature’s interest – consuming resources and producing carbon dioxide at a rate lower than what the planet was able to regenerate and reabsorb each year.

But approximately three decades ago, we crossed a critical threshold, and the rate of human demand for ecological services began to outpace the rate at which nature could provide them.

This gap between demand and supply – known as ecological overshoot – has grown steadily each year. It now takes one year and six months to regenerate the resources that humanity requires in one year.

Every year, Global Footprint Network calculates humanity’s Ecological Footprint – the amount of productive land and sea area required to produce the resources we consume and absorb our waste, including CO2 emissions – and compares that with biocapacity, the ability of ecosystems to regenerate resources.

Earth Overshoot Day, a concept devised by UK-based new economics foundation, is calculated from 2007 data (the most recent year for which data are available) and projections based on historical rates of growth in population and consumption, as well as the historical link between world GDP and resource demand.

Last year, Earth Overshoot Day was observed on September 25, 2009. This year, overshoot day is estimated to come more than a month earlier in the year. This is not due to a sudden change in human demand, but rather to improvements in the calculation methodology that enable us to more adequately capture the extent of overshoot. (For example, our latest data show the world has less biocapacity available, primarily in the area of grazing land, than previously estimated.)

“We would expect our estimates of overshoot to be, if anything, conservative.” Wackernagel said.

“We know we are far from living within the means of one planet. The good news is, much of the technology we have to begin to address this problem is available and it is open source: things like compact urban design, energy-efficient housing, ecological tax reform, removal of resource subsidies, safe and affordable family planning, bicycles, low-meat diets, and life-cycle costing.”

To calculate your own personal Ecological Footprint, and learn what you can do to reduce it, go to www.footprintnetwork.org/calculator.

Amid the widespread coverage of the devastating flooding and landslides in Pakistan and China, one news story in one paper caught my eye: the trauma inflicted on a passenger of the helicopter that ditched into Victoria Harbour.

While the hoi polloi have to make do with the humble ferry, this high-powered executive took what turned out to be an unsuccessful ride on a helicopter for a trip from Hong Kong to Macau. But for the manoeuvres of the skilful pilot, there might have been a sad loss of lives. One would have thought someone who’d gone through such a trauma would much rather sit tight on dry land for a while. But no – said executive promptly gathered his family for a flight to an exotic hideout for the rich and famous – to forget about what had happened. Of course.

Oh, and to think of it: he couldn’t take his private chartered flight back to London because that plane took a dive too, so he had to make alternative arrangements.

Now, after all that flying around on private jets, how much carbon emissions would you reckon he’d worked up? You’d expect him of all people to know – for the guy heads “Sustainable Forestry for Life”, an investment vehicle that sells carbon credits. You’d also expect him to know better than to fly around on exclusive shuttles when alternative forms of transport that produce less greenhouse gas emissions are available. Maybe he reckons he can spew the carbon emissions one moment, and happily offset it by buying up land for re-forestation. Or maybe it doesn’t matter: it’s just the investors who have to do that; he just makes the money from selling these credits so he can do whatever he pleases.

So is the tragedy the fact that Sky Shuttle has not responded to his claim for a waterlogged BlackBerry? No, the real tragedy is that the story should get so much coverage in the Post – front page and page 4 – more than one month after the incident, while the stories of Pakistan and China were quickly bumped off to the inside pages. The real tragedy is also the fact that someone ostensibly involved in promoting sustainability should display such flagrant disregard for climate change.

There’s no denying the fact that he saved a friend’s life in the incident. But there’s also no denying the certainty that, if he and others like him continue their current lifestyle, his young children won’t have a decent life of their own when they get to his age. Catastrophic climate change would make sure of that.

The NGOs must be overstretched, what with the flooding and landslides in China, more flooding in Pakistan and the wild fires in Russia.

Is there anything we can do for the suffering millions, apart from making donations to the NGOs involved in emergency relief in the affected regions?

The answer is a resounding yes: we just have to eat less meat, travel less and stop shopping till we drop. These climate change-driven disasters would not have happened if industries are not generating so much greenhouse gas emissions, but the problem is not with industries, but us, because industries only spew greenhouse gas emissions to produce the products we want. If we don’t want them, or at least want less of them, the corresponding amount of greenhouse gas emissions generated will be less.

As the United Nations has predicted, climate change will “hit the poorest and the most marginalised groups the hardest”. Our demand for consumer goods has led to the development of factories that have caused enormous pollution in what was once pristine countryside while the former farmers end up slaving in the same factories for a paltry wage. It would have been better and healthier, for them and us, had the farmland been preserved for the cultivation of organic foodstuff for human consumption.

Doctors around the world are recommending we eat less meat to lead healthier lives, and travelling less would mean less stress from the endless packing and unpacking, jet lag, indigestion and aimless waiting at airports. Consuming less would save Earth’s resources and our wallets at the same time.

If we could do all three, we would save ourselves lots of money as well as the donations we feel the urge to make due to the terrible suffering. And Earth will thank us for it.

The Hong Kong Government’s been found out again: in making speeches at climate change conferences, government officials from the Chief Executive down like to point out that Hong Kong’s carbon footprint is only about 6.7 tonnes per capita, way lower than the US’s figure, which ranges from 19.1 tonnes to 29 tonnes.

Last year a study called “Carbon Footprint of Nations: A Global, Trade-linked Analysis” that was published in the June 2009 edition of the Environmental Sciences and Technology Journal revealed that, in fact, our per capita carbon footprint is 29 tonnes, the second-highest in the world, behind just Luxembourg.

The huge discrepancy has arisen, it seems, because the government takes into account only local activities, ie. our electricity consumption and transport use. The authors of the carbon footprint study, however, based their calculations on overseas emissions that are related to Hong Kong as well as domestic activities. As it turned out, the manufacturing and transportation of imported goods accounted for much more carbon emissions; only 17% of emissions was due to domestic activities.

Now World Wide Fund HK has come up with its own figure of 13.44 tonnes, which, while lower than the figure produced by the carbon footprint study authors, is still considerably higher than the government’s. The reason for the difference: WWF’s calculation is based on our energy consumption, transport use and AIR TRAVEL.

Think about that: 13.44 tonnes – 6.7 tonnes = 6.74 tonnes. That’s more than half of our carbon emissions attributable to air travel! It’s not hard to believe either: companies use Hong Kong as a regional hub for employees who are frequently sent around Asia; and some – including a certain WWF sponsor – send their employees as far as head offices in Europe and the US. At the same time, Hong Kong residents have become so accustomed to taking holidays abroad that, just give them an extra public holiday that will make up a long weekend, and they’re off. So eager are they to go, they’re back in Thailand well before all travel warnings were cancelled.

It’s a hard habit to break, but if we care about our own and our children’s survival, it’s time to cut back. As the director of the Hong Kong Observatory, Dr Lee Boon-ying, said, “Climate change causes rising temperatures and erratic rainfall. Over the past century, the temperature of Hong Kong seawater has increased 0.5ºC …the catastrophic typhoon Hagupit that flooded Tai O in 2008 used to be an event that only happened once in 50 years, but by the middle of this century, it will happen once every nine years and then by the end of this century, once in two years if climate change continues. We need to change our lifestyle and practice low-carbon living to prevent the crisis from happening.”

See how it never rains now but it’s invariably an episode of red rain or black rain? And see the disasters unfolding in China, Pakistan and Russia? Unless we take action, things will get much worse.

Superman Li Ka Shing has just announced his decision to pledge a third of his assets to charity.

Before the applause breaks out though, let’s take a pause and look at a parallel announcement by Hutchison Whampoa of plans to spin off its subsidiary Husky Energy.

That’s right, Husky, the “Canadian-based integrated energy and energy-related company”, “one of the top holders of oil sands resource in Alberta with more than 2,700 square kilometres of oil sands leases … located in the resource-rich areas of Athabasca and Cold Lake, with smaller land holdings in the Peace River deposit.”

While European oil and gas companies such as Shell and BP find it necessary to at least pay token attention to environmental concerns by coming up with greenwash about investing in renewable energy or being socially responsible, Hong Kong-based Hutchison Whampoa apparently has no such worries in, alas, environmentally green – green, as in being still wet around the ears – Hong Kong, as the quotes from its website above illustrates.

Husky and BP sealed a joint-venture agreement to extract oil from Canadian tar sands back in 2007. Unlike conventional oil, extracting oil from tar sands is an energy-consuming and intensely polluting business. Using tar sands to produce one barrel of oil is estimated to generate three to five times the greenhouse gas emissions of producing the same barrel from conventional oil.

Not only that. The energy return on investment ratio (EROI) from tar sands is ridiculously low. For comparison, when oil was so plenty in the US of the 1930s that it almost gushed out of the surface with a little poking, it took the energy equivalent of just one barrel of oil to find, extract, and process about 100 barrels of oil, or an EROI of 100:1. Nowadays, it’s down to about 14:1 because conventional oil is getting harder and harder to find and extract.

For tar sands, the ratio is 2:1 to 4:1, depending on the analyst you talk to. In addition to being hugely polluting, the process of extracting oil from tar sands also consumes huge amounts of water and natural gas – all so an energy company can make lots of money and be spun off from its parent. Extracting oil from tar sands is such a bad idea, it’s been described as “turning gold into lead”.

And it gets better: Huskey apparently sells an oil product which consists of oil from tar sands and 10% ethanol from wheat and corn. Which, surely, are better used feeding us?? And ethanol’s EROI? 1.2:1 – worse than tar sands. And better still: Huskey calls the product, ahem, “Mother Nature’s Fuel”.

Would the one-third of the US$21 billion Li Ka Shing bequeaths to charity cover the cost of climate change? It’s doubtful whether that US$7 billion would be enough just to rehabilitate Alberta’s freshwater resources and decimated landscape. So what’s the point of his philanthropy exactly?