- Both individuals and businesses need to play their part in lowering carbon emissions, and increasing the city’s proportion of clean energy seems inevitable
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With two-thirds of Hong Kong’s carbon emissions coming from power generation, increasing the proportion of clean energy seems inevitable.Switching off all air conditioning to achieve zero carbon emissions may sound a little extreme. But it underlines the challenges in fighting global warming, a common goal that involves behavioural and institutional changes from all stakeholders.As the threats loom larger and the clock for action ticks faster, it is time we made tough choices. The options for Hong Kong have been mapped out in the public consultation on the long-term decarbonisation strategy, with the focus being drawn to importing more nuclear energy from across the border.The idea strikes a raw nerve, not just because it touches on the issue of nuclear safety, but also resistance arising from the perceived higher reliance on the mainland. The lack of information about the actual impact on electricity tariffs also makes discussion difficult.With two-thirds of the city’s carbon emissions coming from power generation, increasing the proportion of clean energy seems inevitable.Currently, nuclear power from the mainland accounts for about a quarter of our energy supply. As long as safety is not an issue, there is no reason why we cannot develop on that basis, along with more use of solar and other renewable energies.In addition to other institutional options such as phasing out polluting fuels for vehicles and introducing more incentives for green buildings, a great deal can be achieved at both individual and corporate levels.For example, air conditioning will be just as comfortable when set at 24 degrees Celsius instead of 21. Cutting down on fashion and plastic consumption helps, as can replacing business trips by video conferencing.
How far are you willing to go to save planet from climate change?These changes are simple and easy to do, but they go a long way in saving our planet.To combat climate change, the Paris Agreement has set a carbon reduction target to keep the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2 degrees Celsius.A small city like ours may seem too little to make an impact on climate change. But as a responsible global citizen and a heavily developed world city, we have a duty to help mitigate the impact.The consultation has put the relevant issues into perspective in a timely manner. For the sake of sustainable development and the well-being of future generations, tough choices will have to be made.Source: SCMP
27/06/2019
Tough choices lie ahead on global warming
13/04/2019
China targets nuclear fusion power generation by 2040
HEFEI, China (Reuters) – China aims to complete and start generating power from an experimental nuclear fusion reactor by around 2040, a senior scientist involved in the project said, as it works to develop and commercialize a game-changing source of clean energy.
China is preparing to restart its stalled domestic nuclear reactor program after a three-year moratorium on new approvals, but at a state laboratory in the city of Hefei, in China’s Anhui province, scientists are looking beyond crude atom-splitting in order to pursue nuclear fusion, where power is generated by combining nuclei together, an endeavor likened by skeptics to “putting the sun in a box”.
While nuclear fusion could revolutionize energy production, with pilot projects targeting energy output at 10 times the input, no fusion project has up to now created a net energy increase. Critics say commercially viable fusion always remains fifty years in the future.
China has already spent around 6 billion yuan ($893 million) on a large doughnut-shaped installation known as a tokamak, which uses extremely high temperatures to boil hydrogen isotopes into a plasma, fusing them together and releasing energy. If that energy can be utilized, it will require only tiny amounts of fuel and create virtually no radioactive waste.
Song Yuntao, deputy director of the Institute of Plasma Physics at the Hefei Institute of Physical Science, said on Thursday that while technological challenges remain immense, the project has been awarded another 6 billion yuan in funding, and new construction plans are underway.
“Five years from now, we will start to build our fusion reactor, which will need another 10 years of construction. After that is built we will construct the power generator and start generating power by around 2040,” he said at the site, built on a leafy peninsula jutting into a lake.
China has been researching fusion since 1958, but at the current stage, it is still more about international cooperation than competition, Song said. The country is a member of the 35-nation ITER project, a 10-billion euro ($11.29 billion) fusion project under construction in France.
China is responsible for manufacturing 9 percent of ITER’s components, and is playing a major role in core technologies like magnetic containment, as well as the production of components that can withstand temperatures of over 100 million degrees Celsius (180 million degrees Fahrenheit).
ITER is scheduled to generate first plasma by 2025. A demonstration reactor will then be built, with the aim of creating 500 megawatts of power from just 50 megawatts of input, a tenfold return on energy.
Despite the critics who say dependable fusion energy is unrealistic, Song said he was confident breakthroughs are being made.
“Because we have a lot of technology now, a lot of challenges in plasma physics have been overcome, and I think this will speed up the entire process,” he said.
($1 = 6.7188 yuan)
($1 = 0.8859 euros)
Source: Reuters
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