The Environmental Protection Department (EPD) has launched a ‘Pilot Green Transport Fund’ a few years ago which provides HK$300 million as funding budget and welcomes interested parties to apply for subsidies for trials of green innovative transport technologies with the hope of reducing carbon emissions and improving air quality in Hong Kong. Until the end of August, there are 23 batches of application which have received approval from the EPD, showing that the program has been running smoothly.
According to the EPD website, the green technologies eligible for the funding include but not limited to fuel saving devices, alternative-fueled vehicles (such as electric vehicle and transformed conventional vehicle), and after-treatment emission reduction devices like diesel particulate filters and exhaust gas recirculation systems.
Still, there are some requirements for the funded green technologies. For example, based on a sound scientific foundation, the new technology should be able to significantly surpass the conventional technology in various aspects, such as lower emission of air pollutants and less consumption of fuels. It is expected that the technology should also be able to fit in with Hong Kong’s actual situation, such as the traffic condition, narrow roads, steep hills and the hot and humid weather, while not violating the statutory requirements of other regulatory departments. Moreover, with the goal of promoting sustainable development in the transport industry, the capital and operation costs of the new technology should be affordable to other operators.
In order to carry out efficient and effective evaluation on the subsidized technology or product, the beneficiaries are required to collect and record relevant product performance data, such as energy consumption and maintenance cost, on a daily basis during the testing process, while a comparison between the performance of the funded product and a conventional resemblance is also needed.
The EPD has by far approved 135 trial projects and the numbers of on-trial and completed cases are 97 and 67 respectively, in which most of them are commercial vehicles such as electric taxis, buses, light and medium goods vehicles, and hybrid light goods vehicles, while there are still some other green products, such as solar and electric inverter air-conditioning system for buses, as well as diesel-electric propulsion systems and seawater scrubber for ferries. As the fund budget was set to be $300 million, the government would welcome more invention and trials of new innovative products so as to pursue a sustainable Hong Kong.
