Smaller rise in power rates next year, says CLP
More than two million power users in the New Territories and Kowloon can expect a smaller tariff rise next year than had been forewarned, CLP Power says.
More than two million power users in the New Territories and Kowloon can expect a smaller tariff rise next year than had been forewarned, CLP Power says.
Any gentler increase in charges would be because of what the electricity supplier said was a "notable drop" in international coal prices and a series of measures that primarily reduced the use of more expensive natural gas to generate power.
But CLP Power vice-chairwoman Betty Yuen So Siu-mai, in revealing the news yesterday, stopped short of disclosing the company's proposed tariff increase for next year.
The firm had projected an 11.8 per cent rise in 2015, in a five-year development plan to the Environment Bureau last year.
But if coal prices continued to drop, consumers might see just single-digit tariff growth, said the Hong Kong-based World Green Organisation, which has been watching the local electricity market closely.
"The smaller increase can help relieve a chain of price increases as a result of higher power bills," the organisation's chief executive William Yu Yuen-ping said.
Beyond 2015, further rises - of between 3.9 and 7.9 per cent each year - are forecast until 2018.
HK Electric, which serves Hong Kong Island and Lamma, has pledged to freeze tariffs for five years until 2018. At the start of this year, CLP's power tariffs in Kowloon and the New Territories rose by 3.9 per cent to HK$1.10 per kilowatt-hour.
Notwithstanding the rise, CLP Power hit a new record in peak usage this summer - whose July was the hottest in 130 years.
At its maximum, power usage reached 7,030 megawatts - 3.9 per cent more than the 6,908MW the firm could generate locally at any one time, CLP said at its interim results announcement.
The shortfall was met by imports of nuclear power.
Yuen said the company drew more gas from a depleting Hainan reserve, which lessened its reliance on gas transported via the mainland's second West-to-East pipeline.
Gas from the pipeline is said to be three times more expensive than the reserve's.
CLP Power will boost its imports by "a small amount" from the nuclear power station in Daya Bay, Shenzhen, from the fourth quarter, under a cross-border pact signed last year.