Publications

Survey of Energy Resources 2007

Bioenergy Country Notes

In May 2005, the Hong Kong Government established a renewable energy strategy in its First Sustainable Development Strategy for Hong Kong. The strategy aims for 1-2% of total power generation to come from renewables by the year 2012. This would be met through a combination of wind power, solar energy and waste-to-energy. Municipal solid waste could make a significant contribution to this goal.

Hong Kong’s comprehensive Policy Framework for the Management of Municipal Solid Waste (2005-2014) outlines a plan for reducing waste, increasing recycling and recovery, and treating about half of the remaining waste by incineration and/or other methods. These could include waste-to-energy.

A demonstration waste-to-energy facility was operated by Green Island Cement in 2005. This facility combined waste and fuel oil to produce electricity for on-site use.

Of approximately 240 million cubic metres of landfill gas available in Hong Kong in 2005, about 130 million cubic metres were utilised as energy.  The unused gas was flared.

In 2005, the major uses of landfill gas in Hong Kong were heating up leachate in the ammonia removal process for the treatment of landfill waste water on-site, and generating electricity for the landfill site infrastructures, such as offices, maintenance workshop and pumping stations.

However, landfill gas was also used in a variety of other ways: as fuel in the production of town gas, and for power generation supplied to the grid; gas from a closed landfill (containing 14.3 million tonnes of waste, including construction and demolition waste) was treated and piped to the gas company where it was used as fuel to provide 72 TJ of energy in the town gas production process. Landfill gas was also used to generate 14 TJ (4 Gigawatt hours) of electricity for the Hong Kong power grid.