The prospect of bigger electricity bills saw an angry crowd lay siege to the headquarters of electricity supplier CLP Power last Wednesday.
Slogans were yelled and banners brandished at the building in Argyle Street, Mong Kok, in protest at CLP chairman Michael Kadoorie's warning the day before, at his company's annual general meeting, of a 'material' rise in tariffs over the next three years for customers in Kowloon, the New Territories and Lantau.
In other words, 80 per cent of the city's population were going to see their electricity bills soar.
Kadoorie claimed the increases were the 'inevitable' consequence of the government's clean-energy policy, which would require the company to import more gas from the mainland and pay more for it.
The chairman's warning that the 40 per cent increase in CLP's fuel bill would 'materially' affect prices of electricity for its customers not only infuriated the protesters, it raised concerns among legislators, academics and green groups and resurrected calls for the government to break up the duopoly of CLP and Hongkong Electric that has supplied all of Hong Kong's electricity for more than a century.
CLP chief executive Andrew Brandler countered that it was the clean-energy policy forcing the companies' hands and called on the government to properly explain the new rules to the public, and their consequences.