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Following is the speech by the Permanent Secretary for the Environment, Ms Anissa Wong, at Hong Kong Construction Association's (HKCA) Environmental Conference this morning (January 18):
Mr Yip, Mr Jones, Ladies and Gentlemen,
I am very pleased to join the Hong Kong Construction Association's Environmental Conference today. HKCA has been a valuable partner of the Government in advancing environmental performance of the construction industry. It was only five months ago that I joined the launching ceremony of your Clean Air Charter, and today, you are going to introduce the environmental tool box training kits to promote measures to be adopted by construction site workers to better protect the environment in carrying out their day-to-day activities. Your commitment and proactive actions are an excellent role model for all to follow.
In fact, the HKCA has an admirable record in raising environmental performance. Your active participation over the past 10 years in the tripartite Working Group with the Environmental Protection Department (EPD) and the truck drivers have helped resolve many issues to facilitate the smooth implementation of the Construction Waste Charging Scheme. Your ongoing voluntary effort to work with the Real Estate Developer Association to introduce the concept of Waste Management Planning, when successful, will go a long way in containing the substantial waste generated from construction sites which stood at around eight million tonnes in 2007. The Best Practice Guide for Environmental Protection on Construction Sites you published in 2002 is by far the industry's number one solution book on how to resolve pollution problems, and I understand you will issue a new edition later this year. The outcomes of these joint efforts are obvious. Construction activities in Hong Kong are now being carried out in an environmentally much better and socially more caring manner compared with what it was a little less than ten years ago. The enforcement statistics of EPD for the construction industry also shows that the number of non-compliance cases dropped by as much as 90% during this period of time.
The theme of today's conference is "Sustainable Construction - Benchmarking Performance".
Subscribing to the value of sustainability underlines the care and concern that we show for our future generations. While we are striving to meet the aspiration of economic growth and social development for our present needs, we do so without compromising the ability of the future generations to meet their needs. In practical sense, it means mankind has to continue with research for continual technological innovation to become better stewards of the environment that promotes positive economic growth and social objectives. In the construction industry, we have witnessed the vigorous upgrading of the construction technologies and tools. Many construction site pollution abatement and waste reduction measures that were considered new and innovative several years ago have quickly become the industry standard practice nowadays. We are no longer focusing on pollution abatement and waste reduction, but are extending our attention to wider considerations of sustainability through promoting cleaner production, energy efficiency, choice of environmental-friendly material, nature and cultural conservation, corporate social responsibility etc. These will mean we start applying sustainability standards in the earliest possible stage such as project design, procurement decisions, personnel training and setting environmental benchmark.
Talking about project design, you are no doubt aware to a public consultation exercise that the Environment Bureau launched three weeks ago on a proposal to introduce the mandatory implementation of the Building Energy Codes. In gist, this proposal requires new commercial buildings and the communal areas of new residential and industrial buildings in both the private and public sectors as well as major retro-fitting works in existing buildings to comply with the Building Energy Codes promulgated by the Electrical and Mechanical Services Department. Also, energy audits would be required for certain buildings once every 10 years. To complement the proposed legislative scheme, buildings that have exceeded the minimum building energy efficiency standards by a prescribed percentage will be recognised by an energy mark through a voluntary administrative scheme. Our estimate is that for new buildings, the implementation of the proposal will result in energy saving of 2.8 billion kilowatt hours in the first decade, equivalent to a reduction in carbon dioxide emission of 1.96 million tonnes. As you are the builders as well as users of our buildings, I look forward to your views and contributions to this proposal and tell us how best we should proceed. You can do so by writing to us or filling in the short questionnaire posted on our website before end of March.
There are also other ways the construction industry can help to improve air quality. In October last year, the Chief Executive in his Policy Address announced a proposal to legislate the replacement of industrial diesel with ultra low sulphur diesel in all industrial and commercial processes. I am pleased to inform you that the proposal was favourably considered by the Environmental Affairs Panel of the Legislative Council last month and the Advisory Council on the Environment earlier this week on Monday. We have now started preparing the Amendment to the Fuel Regulation and aim to have it introduced to the LegCo in the next few months. Your Clean Air Charter has already taken the lead to include a pointer to the industry to shift to ultra low sulphur diesel in construction sites.
While we have talked about the issue of guidelines and training kits, nothing is more important than inculcating the environmental values and professional knowhow in our workforce. An Environmental Officer is now a standard staffing requirement of all construction teams working on government projects. They play a key role in ensuring compliance with environmental standard and contribute significantly towards developing innovative ideas and exploring alternative construction techniques to abate pollution problems. The entries of your first Innovative Environmental Award to be presented later today are just testimony of some of their capabilities. I look forward to continuing expansion of this good practice to all construction projects in Hong Kong because it would greatly enhance the overall environmental performance and smooth operation of construction activities.
We are acutely aware of the perception that those who have worked so hard to protect the environment are often left unnoticed. In this regard, I must thank the HKCA for organising the Environmental Awards and congratulate all those who will be honoured later today. I would also like to share with you the plan of EPD and some major industrial and business organisations, to launch a prestigious award scheme - the Hong Kong Awards for Environmental Excellence - this year. The scheme aims to promote businesses and organisations in seven major sectors including the construction industry to adopt green management, to benchmark their commitments towards best practices within their sector and to recognise the environmental efforts of industry leaders. The Award Scheme will comprise two categories of award - the Environmental Labels that recognise the environmental performance of individual organisations towards waste reduction, energy saving, indoor air quality improvement and eco-product design; and the Sectoral Awards which allow participants to compete within the sector for the prizes consisting of gold, silver and bronze awards. A number of briefings and dissemination seminars about the scheme will be conducted to brief the media, and the industries on its themes, entry details and assessment criteria in due course. All companies in the relevant sectors, operating primarily within Hong Kong, are eligible to participate in the events. I would therefore like to take the opportunity to encourage members of the construction industry to join the scheme to benchmark your commitment towards environmental protection and demonstrate your leadership on the environmental front.
To further encourage the participation from different sectors of the community to adopt environmental and conservation practices in their corporate strategies and lifestyles so as to enhance the quality of the environment, the Legislative Council has recently approved the injection of a one-off sum of $1 billion into the Environmental and Conservation Fund (ECF) in this fiscal year. The ECF is a statutory trust fund open to applications from local non-profit organisations, tertiary institutions and schools. The injected funds will go a long way in attracting more applications of innovative, worthwhile, larger scale and longer term projects as well as various cross-boundary collaboration programmes which can help address regional environmental problems. Please feel free to liaise with us if you need further information of ECF for reference in your future endeavour to promote and adopt new pollution abatement technologies and best practices.
Last but not the least, let me conclude by congratulating the HKCA and its environmental committee for their contribution to environmental protection over the years and for organising this meaningful event. I wish you every success.
Thank you.
Ends/Friday, January 18, 2008
Issued at HKT 12:21
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