EPD

South China Morning Post – 19 July 2011

Green activists like to joke that environmental impact assessments are “invincible”. They are compiled, tabled, commented upon – but never rejected.

The joke is not far off. Just seven EIAs have been turned down, compared with 162 approved, since the reports were mandated in 1998, according to the latest figures available on the Environmental Protection Department’s website.

Why?

Critics say that the biggest reason for this imbalance is that the EPD is not independent enough. It’s a branch of the government – the same government that, in many cases, is seeking an environmental ruling, or is the beneficiary of a positive decision. Since 1998, the government has been the biggest subscriber to the environmental impact assessment process. It filed 123 reports to the EPD for approval, compared with 73 submissions from the private sector, according to the Post’s analysis.

The biggest single client has been the Civil Engineering and Development Department – the government department responsible for new town development, reclamation projects and land formation – which requested 51 reports. Next came the Highways Department with 26 reports and the Drainage Services Department with 22 reports. The EPD itself submitted eight reports; all were approved.

Paul Lam Kwan-sing, a professor specialising in marine life, chairs the Advisory Council on the Environment, which must clear a project before the department approves it. He disagrees that the EIA process is just a rubber stamp. He said that only a few assessment reports were rejected because consultants had sought advice from various government departments as they compiled their reports.

However, he agreed that the system could be improved by forming a pool of international experts who would review the reports and advise council members on the shortcomings of the consultancy studies.

“I believe council members are very committed. But it is difficult for them to comment on technical issues without certain expertise,” Lam said.

An EPD spokesman said the EIA process was objective and transparent, requiring that issues raised by the public and the council were addressed before a decision could be made. But Mike Kilburn, of the think tank Civic Exchange, says there’s a problem, and it goes back six years, to when the top posts at the watchdog were taken over by policy bureau administrators.

“Up until 2005, the director was an environmental scientist, a career scientist who understood the ordinance and the science, but this is no longer the case,” Kilburn said. “The director no longer has his professional judgment as an environmental scientist to rely on.”

Kilburn said the merger blurred the roles of the director and led to conflicts of interest.

“The key role of the director is as a regulator. And when the role of a regulator is combined with the role of somebody whose job is to deliver policy outcome, he has a blurred distinction, which could possibly lead to a conflict of interest, particularly on government projects,” he said.

The problem doesn’t end there.

The consultants who write the EIA studies are hired by the people pushing for projects to be approved.

“The current EIA arrangement is for the project proponent to hire the consultant for the study, and this calls the consultant’s independency into question,” said Edwin Lau Che-feng, director of Friends of the Earth. Most of those consultants hail from a small group of large consulting firms, the Post found. The 196 studies compiled in the past 13 years were produced by approximately 30 firms. Just three of them – ERM Hong Kong, Maunsell Consultants Asia, and Ove Arup – accounted for about 35 per cent of the reports. The same three also accounted for a third of the studies commissioned by the government.

Most of the studies were large-scale projects like power infrastructure, site formation, and rail and road development.

There is no estimate as to how much these firms were paid, because the cost of a study usually depends on the scale of a particular development. The cost estimate is usually buried in the engineering feasibility budget.

While there is no evidence to suggest the consultants would distort their studies to suit their employers, some critics said these big players, with their long experience, can easily get around the EIA requirements with their technical expertise.

“They know well the technical tricks by adopting different modelling methods for their purposes,” said Roy Tam Hoi-pong, president of Green Sense.

Unlike doctors, lawyers or accountants, there are no professional bodies governing the consultants’ qualifications, standards, ethics and discipline. The closest equivalent is the Hong Kong Institute of Environmental Impact Assessment. But it is not a statutory body such as the Medical Council and has only loose control over its members.

Andy Brown, executive director of Kadoorie Farm and Botanic Garden, said there was great room to improve the quality, accountability and professionalism of environmental consultants and transparency of the EIA.

“The EIA report should list all consultants involved, their credentials, exact role, time input, with time and date of surveys provided,” Brown told lawmakers in a recent meeting on the need for an EIA review. At present, reports present the name of the company but not the individuals involved, nor survey details.

Brown says too many studies appear to have been done on the cheap.

“The quality of some of the ecological surveys and assessment can be rather variable,” he said. “This is due to market competition forcing consultants to carry out ecological surveys at the lowest possible cost and in the shortest possible time. There is also the possibility of hiring people without the expertise and experience needed.”

He proposed that the EPD maintain a registry listing professional consultants’ training, expertise and experience.

An independent committee should be set up to provide scientific advice to the Advisory Council on the Environment in scrutinising EIA reports.

The last environmental impact assessment report rejected had nothing to do with Hong Kong. It was the Tonggu Channel dredging project, proposed by the Shenzhen port authority to enable the Shekou container cargo terminal to expand in May 2005. The project was pronounced dead by Keith Kwok Ka-keung, an administrative officer and then the department’s chief.

The rejection, based on the assessment report’s failure to adequately assess the environmental impact and risks to the Chinese white dolphin, came just two months after Dr Rob Law, an environmental scientist, chose to leave the top post after 24 years with the watchdog.

Law was remembered for rejecting the impact assessment of the Lok Ma Chau rail spur line project, which was originally designed to traverse the bird haven at Long Valley, in 2000. The project was proposed by the Kowloon-Canton Railway Corporation, a public-funded body, and managed by a former top official, Yeung Kai-yin.

The current director of environmental protection, Anissa Wong Sean-yee, has not rejected a single one of the more than 70 assessment studies she has handled. A former administrative officer, she took over from Keith Kwok Ka-keung in 2006.

Last updated: September 17, 2010

Source: South China Morning Post

Clearer skies, dearer electricity in prospect

Hong Kong’s two power companies have been ordered to reduce emissions of major pollutants by up to 64 per cent in the next five years.

While the measures should improve general air quality, they will do nothing to reduce roadside pollution.

And they could push up power bills. The targets the government has set the companies – CLP Power (SEHK: 0002) and Hongkong Electric (SEHK: 0006) – require much greater use of natural gas, which is dearer than coal.

The companies will be required to raise the share of natural gas used for generation from 39 per cent this year to 52 per cent in 2015. The government said gas prices would determine whether consumers have to pay more for electricity.

The new pollution caps mean overall cuts in emissions of 50 per cent for sulphur dioxide, 35 per cent for nitrogen oxides and 34 per cent for respirable suspended particulate.

All three cause respiratory symptoms and disease and can aggravate conditions such as asthma. Particles can cause more severe problems by lodging in the lungs. Nitrogen oxides can also combine with oxygen to form the pollutant ozone and can cause acid rain.

The Environment Bureau announced the new caps three months before the companies’ deadline for meeting the current targets, set two years ago. According to the latest available figures, for last year, they had only achieved the one for nitrogen oxides.

The companies face fines of HK30,000 for every tonne by which they exceed any of the caps. Fines are doubled for second and subsequent offences and senior executives face up to six months in jail.

Greenpeace campaigner Prentice Koo Wai-muk welcomed the greater use of natural gas in generating electricity but criticised the government for delaying its review of air quality objectives, which should have been completed a few months ago. The current objectives date to 1987.

“With more natural gas [being used], the objectives should be tightened immediately,” he said.

WWF senior campaigner Angus Wong Chun-yin said tighter caps would improve regional air quality but the city needed more measures to mitigate roadside pollution.

In a paper prepared for discussion by the Legislative Council next week, the bureau said it had taken new factors into consideration in setting the caps, which are subject to review after three years.

“To realise the maximum emission reduction potential of the power sector, the distribution of the emission allowances can no longer be made based solely on consideration of the respective share of local electricity generation of the two power companies,” it said.

For the first time, the companies have been set different targets. CLP, which generates a greater proportion of its electricity from gas, will have to reduce its sulphur dioxide output by 64 per cent, whereas Hongkong Electric will have to cut its emissions of the pollutant by only 28 per cent.

A bureau spokesman said CLP had been set a tighter cap on sulphur dioxide emissions since it was not using to the full its existing gas-fired generation units. This was because it could not secure sufficient supplies of gas, but a recently signed memorandum of understanding on energy co-operation with the mainland would enable it to source more gas by 2015. Hongkong Electric had much less scope for increasing natural gas use, the spokesman said.

CLP said in 2006 the reserves in its Yacheng gas field off Hainan were lower than expected and it would have to burn more coal in order to conserve them.

Natural gas accounted for just 24.7 per cent of CLP’s fuel mix last year despite its big gas-fired power station at Black Point.

Hongkong Electric has only two gas-fired units but natural gas made up 30 per cent of its fuel mix this year.

The bureau said it had also looked at the extent to which the companies could switch from coal-fired to natural-gas generation and further reduce emissions through the use of new technology.

A CLP spokeswoman said the company supported moving towards higher air quality standards but compliance could be restricted by other factors such as the lack of timely availability of natural gas. A spokeswoman for Hongkong Electric said the city needed a long-term policy on increasing natural gas usage to assist its negotiations with gas suppliers.