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Arup’s Race To Zero Webinar: Low & Zero Carbon Transport Systems In Hong Kong

Arup’s Race to Zero webinar series has brought together experts from various fields—from policymakers, climate experts to business leaders—to share insight on climate change and agree on united actions to achieve the carbon neutrality goal. Its final series on 22 October 2021 focused on low and zero-carbon transport systems in Hong Kong. The discussion invited three panellists to share opportunities to achieve a low and zero-carbon transport system, moderated by TC Chew, Director and Global Rail Leader at Arup.

The first speaker, Operations Director of MTR Corporation Limited, Dr Tony Lee, shared his engineering expertise on the MTR journey towards a low-carbon railway and bus operating system. MTR has two focuses to decarbonize Hong Kong’s railway: to reduce energy consumption and explore all renewable energy and cleaner sources to drive the train. The corporation also explore the system to get a better resilience, one of them is by embarking on a new way of installing solar panels on its buildings and vehicles. MTR also implemented Green initiatives to the Hin Keng Station as a Green model station and obtained the first station certified with the BREEAM Green Building.

Another leader in the industry, Adam Leishman, CEO of Bravo Bus and Executive Chair of the Ascendal Group, shared a transformative action focusing on hydrogen fuel cell-driven busses as an alternative mode of low-carbon or zero-carbon transport system in Hong Kong. The potential of a low carbon zero-emission bus system and particularly highlights some of the challenges and the opportunity that one needs to think through, whether it is about energy transition, technical issues, or the funding aspect.

“It is not an easy path to make everything zero-emission. There have been many examples of failures over the recent years, and we need to make sure that does not happen, particularly in a place like Hong Kong where we are moving a million people a day. We need to make sure the service stays to the high standard that currently is,” said Adam.

The Hong Kong Government is promoting the use of electric-commercial vehicles, and one of them is electric bus. The electric buses are expected to be put into service progressively, along with the new infrastructure of charging and refuelling stations. However, as the most significant concern of the mode is the fuel supply, a fully-established distribution network should soon be prepared.

The last speaker was Dr Bruce Chong, Director of City Advisory and Urban Sustainability at Arup. He played an active role in the industry, particularly in supporting the Green resilience framework with the Hong Kong government. Bruce talked about embedding law and zero-carbon transport systems in a city planning project.

The transport sector represents 24 per cent of overall carbon emissions at the global level. Therefore, mode shift, fuel shift and behavioural shift are essential strategies for planning.

“We need to pay a very high attention to the design of the city. The community design—whether we provide a safe, comfortable, convenient environment and link for people to walk around and travelling—is the most important thing in order to avoid no short trip by using vehicles,” said Bruce. Pedestrian-oriented development is vital on the mode shift, especially for short trips. The development should provide a direct and continuous network and quality walking environment to establish behavioural shift.

The news supply network and storage facilities for new energies are also crucial. Therefore, all levels from landscape to offshore to infrastructure along with road and tunnel, construction and street facilities all different levels need to be embedded with renewable energy.