Budget 2023: Hong Kong launches initiatives to become a global green innovation, finance centre
- The government launched five initiatives to foster innovation and facilitate fundraising for projects with environmental benefits
- ‘We must actively seize the opportunities brought by our country’s dual carbon strategies at the right time,’ said the city’s financial secretary
The government has launched five initiatives to foster innovation and facilitate fundraising for projects with environmental benefits as it vies to transform Hong Kong into an international green technology and finance centre.
Firstly, it will seek to build a green-tech “ecosystem” to attract the best people and enterprises, and encourage collaboration in industry, academia and research communities to accelerate commercialisation of innovative technology, said Financial Secretary Paul Chan Mo-po in his budget speech on Wednesday.
“We must actively seize the opportunities brought by our country’s dual carbon strategies at the right time,” he said. “We should also leverage our strengths under ‘one country, two systems’ and as an international financial centre to accelerate the development of Hong Kong into an international centre for green technology and finance.”
Dual carbon strategies refers to China’s goals to reach peak carbon emissions by 2030, and to achieve carbon neutrality by 2060.
The government will help green projects obtain capital “more conveniently and flexibly” through innovative financing arrangements on top of traditional channels.
Thirdly, it will facilitate the training of talent and cooperation with overseas and regional partners, Chan said.
It will also work to make it easier for new ventures to obtain independent certification for their green credentials – such as carbon emission reduction capacities – which is essential for their fundraising activities.
Finally it will aim to align domestic certification standards with international ones.
The government will set up a green technology and finance development committee to formulate an action plan. It will comprise representatives from the technology, finance and standards certification fields.
It will also organise an “international greentech week” event towards the end of this year, to bring together representatives in the field and investors for idea sharing and collaborations.
The government will itself provide policy support to boost demand for green technology, Chan said.
He has set aside HK$200 million to support trials of electric buses and heavy vehicles powered by hydrogen fuel cells, HK$350 million of subsidies for try-outs of electric ferries, HK$62 million for food waste collection to reduce methane emissions at landfills and a loan scheme to incentivise the taxi trade to switch to electric vehicles.
Christine Loh Kung-wai, chief development strategist for environment and sustainability at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, said it is encouraging that Chan sees the mainland’s decarbonisation goals as an economic opportunity for Hong Kong.
She applauded the government’s support for both green-tech and digital technology development, which she said can go hand in hand with re-industrialisation, something else it is encouraging.
“The government should not miss the fact that Hong Kong itself already has a measure of green-tech credentials, even within the government itself, which should be built upon and marketed in the right way both on the mainland and in Asia-Pacific,” she said.
The city has plenty of talent in science, engineering, technology and finance that the proposed green-tech and finance development committee could bring together to assess what capacities the city already has, and how to use them to innovate and attract more talent and investments, she said.
While the green-tech and green finance initiatives are commendable, successful execution will require coordination between public and private sectors, as well as sufficient support such as subsidies and tax credits, said Andrew Sum of Hong Kong Science Park start-up GRST.
“There need to be pilot cases or programmes put in place quickly to showcase some success stories in Hong Kong, which will attract more talents and companies,” said the chief marketing officer of GRST, which is commercialising sustainable technology for the production and recycling of rechargeable lithium-ion batteries.
Environment group Friends of the Earth (HK) said it was disappointed by the government’s “continued sluggish pace in promoting sustainable development”.
It urged the government to put more resources into supporting renewable energy generation and imports, subsidise appliance retrofits to reduce energy consumption, put a price on carbon emissions and impose a quota on vehicles.