To: Editor of South China Morning Post

I refer to the Editorial's "Take action now to end the bad air days" published on 28 September.

The government is committed to improving Hong Kong’s air quality to protect public health. In the past decade, we have invested over $22 billion to improve roadside air quality by phasing out the most polluting diesel commercial vehicles, promoting trials and applications of different types of electric and new energy vehicles, expanding the electric vehicle charging network, etc.. We have also been tightening control on marine fuels and emission caps for power plants, and collaborating with governments in the Greater Bay Area to reduce regional emissions.

Our efforts are very fruitful – ambient and roadside concentrations of major air pollutants in Hong Kong fell by about 40 to 60% in the past 10 years, and hours of reduced visibility were improved by over 70%.

To set out the targets, strategies and measures to further enhance air quality and reduce carbon emissions, we issued the Roadmap on Popularisation of Electric Vehicles and Clean Air Plan 2035 in March and June 2021 respectively, and will release Hong Kong’s Climate Action Plan 2050 soon. The blueprints together will help lay a foundation for Hong Kong to attain zero vehicular emissions and equally important, carbon neutrality before 2050.

While the Clean Air Plan 2035 sets out our long term goal to fully meet the ultimate targets of the World Health Organization (WHO)’s Air Quality Guidelines (AQGs) issued in 2005, they are stringent, and so far, no country fully adopts them as statutory standards.

The WHO recently released a new set of Air Quality Guidelines with most of the ultimate targets further tightened. Notwithstanding the greater difficulty for many places around the world to achieve AQGs, we are determined to follow WHO’s advice to progressively improve our air quality by achieving the interim targets which are considered as critical indicators of continuously improving public health and proceed to attain AQGs in the longer run.

The Government will very soon embark on the next review of the Hong Kong Air Quality Objectives to examine the effectiveness of our air quality improvement measures and explore new initiatives, and tighten the Objectives wherever practicable, benchmarking against the new AQGs. Similar reviews as required by law will be carried out every 5 years, leading Hong Kong’s transformation towards a more liveable and sustainable city.

Brian Lau,
Principal Environmental Protection Officer (Air Policy),
Environmental Protection Department