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 Energy Use in Hong Kong The Energy Scene of Hong Kong Energy is crucial to the development of modern society. For a metropolitan city like Hong Kong, energy is of fundamental importance to all of the economic activities therein. With the scarcity of flat land within an area of only 1097 square km accommodating a high and ever increasing population, we need enormous energy resources to create a habitable indoor environment inside the high-rise commercial and residential buildings. We also need a great deal of energy resources to light up our night sky, to sustain the intense human activities right into the mid-night. We also need a lot of energy resources to drive our infrastructure machinery - our water supply, drainage systems and road networks. Of course we need energy to provide mobility for everyone of us - railway, trams, cars, aeroplanes. However, there are no indigenous energy resources in Hong Kong, we have to rely totally on imported fuels, and we know that fossil fuels are already exhausting. Import dependence on exhaustible fossil fuel, local environmental problems and concern for the global environment are the driving factors influencing our policies. We seek to ensure that the energy needs of the community are met reliably, efficiently, safely and at reasonable prices and to promote the efficient use and conservation of energy and the minimization of the environmental impact of energy production and use. We are always on the watch for the changing global energy supply and demand situation, and seek for the balance point between achieving economic development, satisfying the need of the society, and protecting our precious environment. To explain the energy scene of Hong Kong, we first look at two major aggregate energy indicators: the "Primary Energy Requirements" (the equivalent of "Total Primary Energy Supply (TPS)" of other economies) and the "Final Energy Requirements" (the equivalent of "Total Final Energy Consumption (TFC)" of other economies). "Primary energy requirements" (PER) refers to the overall energy consumption within the geographic territory. It represents the total supply of energy available to the territory, which supports all the requirements for energy transformation and final consumption in that territory, and includes both indigenous energy sources and imported energy commodities consumed within the territory. In the case of Hong Kong, it is calculated from retained imports of coal and oil products net of bunkers' usage and exports of electricity, after adjustment for supply from stock. "Final energy requirements" (FER) refers to the amount of energy consumed by final users for all energy purposes such as heating, cooking and driving machinery, but excludes non-energy usages such as using kerosene as solvent. It differs from PER in that the latter includes all energy used or lost in the energy transformation and the distribution process. Due to our geographical close proximity with the Mainland of China, much energy use arises out of the regional traffic - i.e. traffic between the Hong Kong ports and the nearby Pearl River Delta ports or the Macau ports. Also, fishing vessels from other regional ports would occasionally come to our local fuelling stations for fuelling. Fuels sold to such end-uses are sometimes recorded by the fuel suppliers as local consumption, and as such are reflected in the PER and FER figures. One problem with such end-uses is that fuelling could take place in either ports, depending on the relative prices. This leads to the "swings" in the PER and FER statistics. There are a number of crucial factors influencing the PER and FER trends: (a) The Hong Kong economy has been changing very rapidly from an industry-driven economy to a services-driven economy. Industries embarked on a massive migration into the Mainland, starting in the 1980s and accelerated in the 1990s. (b) The opening up of the Mainland markets on the other hand provided opportunities for our trading, financial, banking, insurance, and transport services. This led to large increase in energy consumption in the services sector. Besides, the increasing volume of trading activities through the Hong Kong ports also led to a large increase in transport energy consumption. (c) On the supply side, there was a shift in electricity generation from coal-based to firstly imported nuclear and then to natural gas. In the PER and FER trends, these effects offset each other to some extent. Moreover, the effect of the "swings" mentioned above further complicates the trends. Apart from PER and FER, we at the Energy Efficiency Office also compile the Hong Kong Energy End-use Database. The Energy End-use Database provides the Government with energy information base and analytical tools for evaluating energy efficiency policies. We have also developed [|energy consumption indicators and benchmarks] for the commercial and transport sectors. A [|software tool] is also available for users to benchmark their energy consumption levels with others in Hong Kong.

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