Emissions Impossible

When it comes to emissions from buses and trucks, Hong Kong desperately needs to clean up its act. Old diesel vehicles are responsible for 40 percent of the city’s hazardous roadside pollution, a situation enabled by our inexcusably lax regulations. Whereas in Europe commercial vehicles are currently required to meet a minimum emissions standard now updated to a level known as Euro V, in Hong Kong vehicles with engines dating back to pre-Euro and Euro I levels are still freely allowed on the roads. According to figures from the Environmental Protections Department, roughly 78 percent of buses are of Euro-II standard or lower.

When such issues are brought up, there’s still a tendency in Hong Kong to point to the mainland as the dominant source of local air pollution. Yet studies by think tank Civic Exchange have found that 53 percent of the time the city’s air pollution is generated locally. According to local green group Clear the Air, buses and trucks emit about 15 percent of this pollution, and are chiefly responsible for fumes affecting those who live in dense urban areas.

In response, pressure has been growing on the government to phase out such vehicles. Groups such as Clear the Air and Friends of the Earth have repeatedly highlighted the damage they cause, and Secretary for the Environment Edward Yau recently suggested the government help pay for new buses and trucks to speed up the replacement of old ones.

Yet the results have not been forthcoming. So far, the government continues to enforce only a voluntary scheme for the subsidized replacement of pre-Euro and Euro I standard diesel vehicles. Implemented in 2007, the scheme is widely regarded as a failure, with owners of less than 20 percent of the vehicles having applied to take part in it by the end of 2008. As for when the vehicles will finally be removed from our streets, the government has no clear timetable, but predicts the last of them will not be gone until 2015.

Meanwhile, critics believe the government’s promise to promote electric cars, made in the financial secretary’s budget speech earlier this year, serves as little more than a distraction to the problem in question. “Unless you introduce electric buses as well, the effect on air pollution will be minimal, merely cosmetic,” says Edwin Lau, director of Friends of the Earth.

Critics agree that the reason for the government’s reluctance to tackle the problem comes down to powerful opposition from the transport sector. The city’s well-established bus operators such as Kowloon Motor Bus Company and New World First Bus Services have repeatedly challenged any measures that would result in higher costs for them, stating that such measures would inevitably result in an increase in fares. Operators of cargo vehicles have been equally opposed. When the government earlier this year proposed the possibility of a measure that might prevent vehicles with Euro III emission levels and below from entering certain zones in the city, operators came together to speak out against it. One was reported to have said that “more than half of the industry would be dead by the time we can see clear sky.” Meanwhile, Public Light Bus General Association chairman Ling Chi-keung stated that if the measure was implemented in Mong Kok and Causeway Bay, over 1,000 of Hong Kong’s 1,700 minibuses would have to be replaced, which he said would be impossible. The overall interests of the transport sector are represented in Legco by functional constituency legislator Miriam Lau, whose track record involves opposing nearly every measure to tackle roadside pollution, including the conversion of all taxis to liquified petroleum gas.