Greta Thunberg’s widely publicised
sea voyage to the United Nations Climate meetings in New York provided a stark reminder of the travel price we may need to pay if we are to reduce our carbon emissions and prevent runaway climate change.
That might all feel very distant to Hong Kong’s large community of international air travellers, but in Britain, where the government has recently bound itself legally to net zero-carbon emissions by 2050, the implications are stark. As the
Financial Times’ Pilita Clark noted last week, “the scale of change needed to strip emissions out of our daily lives is so huge, it means no home or office will be untouched”.
The point has been driven firmly home by Dr Richard Carmichael and a team from the Centre for Energy Policy and Technology at London’s Imperial College, in a report for the UK government’s Committee on Climate Change: so far, most of the emissions cuts achieved in our efforts to reach
2050 Paris Accord commitments have been achieved by industry, mostly in the shift to renewable energy.
But that is about to change: worldwide, households account for almost three-quarters of greenhouse gas emissions, and if we are to achieve the 2050 targets, they will have to bear most of the change.
According to Carmichael’s study, transport accounts for 34 per cent of emissions in Britain, 30 per cent in agriculture and food consumption, and 21 per cent in housing, mostly for heating. It is in these areas that cuts will be needed if 2050 targets are to be met: “high-impact shifts in consumer behaviours and choices are needed,” he concludes.
The report is a marvellous attempt to focus the mind, and I have to wonder how much more focused our own Hong Kong government would be on the
climate challenges we face if we undertook a similar “audit”. Apart from putting pressure on our government’s complacent reliance on natural gas for power generation into the
2030s, legally binding ourselves to net zero by 2050 would quickly transform our vague and general climate commitments into real, hard, lifestyle choices.
For the transport sector, the Carmichael report mainly focuses on cars and planes, with two separate sobering sets of conclusions and recommendations – and some fascinating food for thought in Hong Kong.
Demand for car transport is still set to grow in Britain so, in the short term, it will need a massive shift to
electric vehicles to stay on track for net zero. Less than 2 per cent of new cars sold in the UK are electric vehicles.
In particular, this will mean a massive shift for commercial and company car fleets, which account for 57 per cent of new sales. In the long term, people must shift to public transport, walking and cycling, and the government must assume significant subsidies and incentives to ensure the needed change.
Hong Kong’s challenge on transport is different, in that there is much lower
car ownership, and wider community use and acceptance of public transport. But still there is scope for improvement. While our transport energy efficiency is better than Tokyo (1.4 megajoules per passenger kilometre, versus 2.2), we do not match Singapore’s 1.3.
For air transport, the UK warning is stark. A rich 15 per cent account for 70 per cent of air travel in Britain, while around a half rarely travel by air. The
emissions impact of rising air travel is huge, and it is largely accounted for by a privileged elite who can, and should, pay more.
Carmichael notes that, while the average British household generates 8.1 tonnes of emissions every year, a single economy flight from London to Angeles consumes 5.7 tonnes, and a first-class seat accounts for seven times this – around 40 tonnes, or equivalent to five years of an average family’s emissions.
He calls for an end to
frequent flyer miles, to be replaced with an air miles levy. He calls on companies to add two days a year to employee holiday entitlements so they can travel to holiday destinations by train. He calls for company investment in conference-call technologies that eliminate the need for all but the most essential business travel.
One wonders how Hong Kong will tackle this challenge, given the huge economic role of our airport as a global
aviation hub, and the convergence in Hong Kong of so many thousands of companies that use it as a regional hub or headquarters. I also wonder how readily business travellers based in the city would sacrifice their frequent flier perks and replace them with an levy. I foresee screams of anguish.
For housing, Carmichael focuses in chilly England mainly on heating, with proposals for massive investment in improved building standards to raise the thermal efficiency of buildings, and hybrid heat pumps to replace central heating systems.
For Hong Kong, our equivalent challenge is
air conditioning, and more on commercial rather than residential buildings, with a pressing need both for improved thermal efficiency, and more energy-efficient air conditioning technologies. Here, we lag far behind Singapore, where according to the
Paris Watch Climate Action Report, energy efficiency in residential buildings is more than twice that in Hong Kong and almost 50 per cent higher than in Tokyo.
On food, Carmichael foresees an urgent need to cut meat out of our diets, and to cut food waste. For Hong Kong, with no farm sector, the direct emissions linked with food are necessarily smaller, but this disguises the guilty reality that we are
massive “importers” of emissions linked to the production of meat and processed foods. There are clearly challenging times ahead for the carnivores among us.
In the absence of a clear and specific net zero plan, Hong Kong seems far off track in terms of getting to zero emissions by 2050. As John Sayer, at Hong Kong’s CarbonCare Innolab, notes: “There can be no exceptionalism for a city as prosperous as Hong Kong.”
David Dodwell researches and writes about global, regional and Hong Kong challenges from a Hong Kong point of view
This article appeared in the South China Morning Post print edition as: Off the emissions track
