Asia/Pacific News
Hong Kong: No Plans to Install Onshore Power Supply at KCCTs
Wong Kam-sing, Secretary for the Environment in Hong Kong, Wednesday said, in response to a question on air pollution from Chan Han-pan in Hong Kong's Legislative Assembly, that there is no intention to provide onshore power supply to seagoing vessels berthing at Kwai Chung Container Terminals (KCCTs).
"According the information provided by terminal operators of the KCCTs, they currently have no plan to install the onshore power supply (OPS) facilities as the space is limited at the KCCTs and few container vessels in the world are equipped with OPS connection facilities," said Kam-sing.
However, Kam-sing added that, in an effort to improve air quality, "the operators of the KCCTs have been progressively replacing their diesel-driven gantry cranes with the hybrid or electric ones in recent years so as to reduce the air pollutants emitted by these machines while they are in operation."
Kan-sing says that 90 percent of the gantry cranes at the KCCTs are driven by hybrid system or electricity.
Additionally, Kam-sing said that the Environmental Protection Department (EPD) has also implemented a initiative to regulate emissions from non-road mobile machinery, including those being used in the KCCTs, which comes into effect June 1.
At the end of May it was reported that plans to provide shore power at Hong Kong's Kai Tak terminal have been temporarily postponed on the grounds that few cruise liners could or would use the costly system.
Also in May, James Newsome, the president and CEO of the South Carolina Ports Authority, down played the relevance of shore power systems, saying the technology "has really been rendered as a last-generation solution at most major ports."
