How Hong Kong can find a sustainable future beyond oil, coal and natural gas
Graeme Lang calls for a halt to the city’s unsustainable lifestyle of wasteful energy consumption, and says long-term action could include better use of agricultural land, and a focus on visionary urban design
Sustainability policies in government and business are mostly about increasing energy efficiency and reducing waste. These are important, but we need to take a longer-term view.
Keeping a city like Hong Kong moving is only possible with large inputs of coal and natural gas, to produce electricity and fuel to carry people and goods into and around the city. Nuclear power currently supplies about 23 per cent of Hong Kong’s electricity. The rest of the electricity and the non-electrified transport comes from fossil fuels.
Hong Kong’s fuel mix for electricity is currently about 75 per cent fossil fuels
Oil production is near or past peak production, even with increases in “non-conventional” sources. Projections based on the history of oil discoveries indicate that, by later this century, most conventional oil will be gone, or will be unrecoverable because of the high cost. Natural gas will also be mostly gone.
Hydraulic fracturing or “fracking” has produced temporary increases in oil and gas production, but depletion of fracked wells is very rapid. Recent assessments indicate that fracked oil and gas are likely to provide only a temporary boost to supply: in the US, a couple of decades at most.
Coal will last longer, but for many reasons most societies are trying to replace coal with other sources of energy. And, in any case, supplies of good-quality coal are dwindling and will probably be uneconomical by early next century.
Hong Kong’s fuel mix for electricity is currently about 75 per cent fossil fuels. The mix will change in the coming decades, with some of the coal replaced by natural gas. But there is no possibility of replacing all the energy we get from fossil fuels with renewable energy.