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.

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.