Based on a chapter of my dissertation I have prepared a shorter article. The title (tentative) is "Electricity and environment politics in Hong Kong: identifying the barriers from the ways that sustainability is defined". Below is the conclusion:
The reasons why sustainable electricity policy in Hong Kong remains underdeveloped go beyond lack of environmental awareness or private commitment to the common goods as often said. Supply-demand relations are ill-constructed in a way that everyone is fairly aware but nobody has the motivation of taking meaningful actions. It stems from the path-dependant institutional setup that restricts a timely transformation, in combination with the Government’s treatment that attributes the problems merely to these structural constraints, more appreciating scientific and economic rationalities than communicative actions.
Everything starts from the historical constraints embedded in the regulatory structures. Hong Kong has never given environmental endeavour the same priority as economic growth. Particularly at the time of economic downturn, no official can afford to undermine growth for the sake of environmental protection. Cross-sectoral sustainability imperatives are at odd with its conventional administrative culture and handled in a piecemeal manner, and apparently the style has been extended to electricity policy. These constraints inevitably nurture critiques from the concerned parties along with the growing public awareness and the (yet successful) democratic movement. These then turns to an emphasis of the role of utilities as the contributors of the causes as well as the solutions and a view that environmental gains are a function of a unidirectional, ‘one-to-one’ relationship between the government and utilities. Local community, however, has never been convinced that environmental protection should be taken as a reason for making more profits if the citizens’ living will be affected. Consequently, the Government as a reactive party deals with the problems mechanistically, while the utilities’ private interests are posited as a conflict to the social objectives. Communicative actions exist only on the consultation documents but not in the policy.
From a broader perspective, the administration’s treatment of electricity is a reflection of the local environmental discourse. With respect to environmental management, it is reluctant to transform itself from a ‘controller’ to a ‘facilitator’ regime and seems to return to the technical dimensions of sustainability (Hills & Welford, 2002; Hills, 2004). Policies addressing the socially constructed consumption rationality that need ‘bottom-up’ demand-side commitment earn little credit. The weakened Government is inclined to play a stronger role in controlling the industrial operations of electricity provision which involve less costs and are more welcomed by taxpayers, rather than prompting substantial behavioural changes in consumption which are normally politically more costly as this often challenges consumption sovereignty (Murphy, 2001b). Extension of the production-focused approach is thus more preferred given the current political climate.
The Hong Kong energy economy is inevitably framed by this situation: electricity provision appears as a conflict between supply and demand sides; while there are certain degree of improvements in the power generation processes, promotion of sustainable energy consumption remains rhetoric and ineffective in the absence of political commitment. As such, it has constituted, at best, only the first half of the notion of sustainable development. What is in need is building a positive, collaborative relationship between the utilities, and the Government and the consumers in particular. Opportunities for negotiation and a more equitable distribution of responsibility between the stakeholders should be given a heavier role in the new agenda (Blake, 1999). However, we do not expect this will happen tomorrow because the minimal progress in democratic development in near future and the extension of the utilities’ monopolist status are going to ruin the ‘trust’ between them and this compounds the guilt of the regulatory constraints.
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