More electrical appliances to get energy labels
Authorities announced on Wednesday that they will introduce mandatory energy efficiency labels for more electrical appliances from September. The Electrical and Mechanical Services Department said that from September 1, the Mandatory Energy Efficiency Labelling Scheme will include gas cookers, LED lights and instantaneous gas water heaters.  The department said these appliances account for around 30 percent of household energy usage, and including them in the labelling scheme could help Hong Kong save 160 million units of electricity every year – equivalent to the reduction of around 75,000 tonnes of carbon emissions a year. Barry Chu, the department's assistant director, said officials are also planning to introduce laws to ban the sale of electrical appliances that fail to meet energy-efficiency standards.  "At this moment in time, the [Mandatory Energy Efficiency Labelling Scheme] does not have a requirement that stipulate that products with a certain energy efficiency level cannot be sold in Hong Kong," he said. "So if we plan to prevent those less efficient products from being sold in Hong Kong, we need to have another piece of legislation. So we need to do some research study, and a market survey and also discuss with the trade in order to proceed with the minimum energy efficiency standard." Chu said the government intends to complete the study next year. In response, environmental group Friends of the Earth said outlawing energy wasting appliances is the right thing to do.  But the group's head of policy research and advocacy, Wendell Chan, said the government may need to introduce incentives or even subsidise consumers to switch to more energy-efficient products.