Letters | Hong Kong is relying on old technology to monitor carbon emissions
- Readers call on the government to adopt new ways of measuring emissions to improve policies on climate change, and reflect on the need for religious tolerance in the wake of an attack on author Salman Rushdie
Accurate and real-time monitoring of greenhouse gas emissions is essential for battling climate change. The current practice of relying on proxy indicators such as energy consumption, however, does not provide adequate statistical information.
The government compiles its emission inventory for the city based on energy use and transport activities, in line with the 2006 guidelines issued by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Yet as it takes time to validate and process the data, the results of the emissions monitoring are usually published with a time lag of two to three years, making it difficult to formulate fully-informed climate policies.
Since the publication of the 2006 guidelines, new technologies have been developed to monitor emissions by directly measuring atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations. A research team in Indianapolis, US, for example, has been measuring atmospheric carbon dioxide using a network of towers and aircraft to assess the effectiveness of mitigation strategies.
In an update to the 2006 guidelines published in 2019, the IPCC invites inventory compilers to explore the potential of atmospheric measurements.