both the global and local environmental production and use of energy, it is essential for Government to take an active approach energy efficiency. Although on a world scale Hong Kong is a user and producer of carbon dioxide, it is Asian average on a per capita basis, (approximately equal to Singapore). Our per capita electricity consumption figures are 4,200 units, which compare with 5,000 units in the UK, 5,500 in Japan, and 10,000 in the USA.
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In a city like Hong Kong, dependent for its very existence on a buoyant industrial and commercial sector, easy access to cheap and plentiful electricity has been one of the main components of its successful economic development. Our aim must be to discourage waste and profligacy in the use of electricity, and to encourage the most efficient uses, thereby reducing unnecessary consumption without endangering economic development. At the same time, a balance has to be struck between the need of the electricity companies to make a fair return on their investment and the needs of society at large to minimise wasteful consumption. The electricity companies at present seek to improve the thermal efficiency
of power generation and in addition they offer advice to large industrial consumers on how to make use of electricity more efficiently. It can however be argued that more could be done encourage the companies to promote energy efficiency through Schemes of Control, which may hence need amendment in order to give the companies a financial interest in exhorting consumers to minimize wasteful consumption.
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We feel that, for a new initiative of the complexity and sensitivity of energy efficiency, a high-level advisory committee is essential, to ensure that policy proposals in the area are considered in detail before submission to Members for approval. The Committee would include concerned Government departments, industrialists of stature, academics from related disciplines, environmentalists, representatives of the public utility companies, and others. We believe that the Chairman of the committee should be the Secretary for Planning, Environment and Lands. The Committee would have broad Terms of Reference
which would allow it to consider proposals to improve energy efficiency, and to advise on them, having regard to their likely effectiveness and economic impact.
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The aim would be to keep power in Hong Kong cheap and abundant, but to encourage its thrifty and efficient usage, and to discourage unnecessary waste. It is likely that action will concentrate in the initial years on building design and public education, to reduce energy loss through poor building design and ignorance of the alternatives.
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