Sustainable Living Hong Kong

The property tycoons want to bite back.

Fed up with negative coverage of their wealth-siphoning activities, one of them – the one who got so much flak over the Hung Hom peninsula saga and the subsequently aborted hiring of a former Buildings Department chief – wants to buy a newspaper so he can get the press to say what he wants them to say.

One shouldn’t be too alarmed perhaps, since the Hong Kong Daily News is already owned by yet another tycoon. But if reports are to be believed and the tycoon plans to turn it into a free tabloid, then civil society had better be prepared for this manipulation of public opinion.

My jaw dropped recently at a presentation about research commissioned by the Climate Change Business Forum, about how buildings can be designed to generate its own electricity and be more energy-efficient. Apparently the research has the support of the Real Estates Developers’ Association, as one of the first slides indicated.

This isn’t surprising if we’re talking about commercial buildings that they build for lease, as they will save operating cost by adopting such technologies. But ordinary residential buildings that they sell at outrageous prices? The only plausible explanation, it seems to me, is that, realising the developers will not implement measures to cut the energy consumption of their buildings when left to self-regulate, the government has finally introduced mandatory building energy codes. And now that they’re forced to spend more money to improve energy efficiency, they’re only too happy to take credit for it.

For more positive news of what the tycoons get up to, wait for the new Hong Kong Daily News.