Net-zero carbon emissions by 2050?

Power stability

Power grid stability is a known strength of Hong Kong. Enlarging the proportion of new energy from wind, solar, and hydro may compromise that reliability. Predicting peak loads and matching them with a wider range of fluctuating energy sources will be a challenge.

A power system with a high proportion of new energy will find traditional operational management cannot cope with the random, fluctuating, and intermittent energy flows and demand spikes, said Qiu Haifeng, manager of the Innovation and Digitalization Department at China Southern Power Grid's Shenzhen Power Supply.

The firm is piloting a digital power grid in Shenzhen, integrating big data and high-performance computing techniques to build digital technology platforms at the cloud and terminal ends.

Sammie Leung, a partner at PwC, observed a momentum for enterprises to explore ways to participate in achieving zero net carbon emission goals in multiple industries across Hong Kong, the mainland, and other Asian regions.

"With Hong Kong as a financial center, we have a broad range of green finance products to enable the green transition in the private sector, because relying on the government alone to solve the problem would not be realistic," she said.

The government's Green Tech Fund of HK$200 million closed the first round of applications in February. The amount of funding for each project ranges from HK$2.5 million to HK$30 million.

The special administrative region also issued green bonds totaling HK$66 billion for five years from 2020. As of June 30, 2020, about HK$7.8 billion had been allocated to seven public projects.

One of the projects is the government office towers at the West Kowloon Reclamation area, where a solar PV system was installed to convert solar radiation into usable electricity.

The Standard Chartered study on carbon dioxide transition by 2025 suggests that Hong Kong exports worth US$205 billion will be at risk as multinationals exit "dirty industries". The city exported US$503.5 billion in 2020.