Shenzhen

Speaking on a panel at the CleanBiz.Asia forum on China's emerging carbon market Ge Xing'an, vice president of the China Shenzhen Emissions Exchange, gave an overview of developments across the border from Hong Kong and his view of how the two cities can collaborate on market-based climate change mitigation.

Finally, some data. A couple of weeks ago Civic Exchange and two Hong Kong universities released a report detailing the extent of emissions from ships in the Pearl River Delta region, and their public health impact. It’s a groundbreaking study. Using 2008 data, researchers from HKUST did a ship emissions inventory of vessels activity across the PRD. They then calculated the dispersion of the pollutants, which showed that Shenzhen and Hong Kong have the most ship emissions, ahead of other coastal PRD regions such as Zhongshan and Dongguan, and outer PRD regions, like Foshan and Huizhou.

Shenzhen-based carmaker BYD saw its shares drop yesterday following news that a BYD E6 electric taxi was involved in a fatal car accident in Shenzhen over the weekend, which raised concerns over the safety of electric cars.

Shenzhen, which trails only Beijing within China in terms of the number of vehicles it has on its streets, recently announced plans to launch a congestion charge in 2016. Shenzhen has 2 million registered vehicles; five years ago it had one million and its maximum capacity is thought to be 2.1 million vehicles. According to Shenzhen’s traffic bureau the city’s vehicle density is the highest in China, with 300 vehicles for every kilometer of road.

Good news for Hong Kong and the besieged Environmental Protection Department, as the Shenzhen local government has announced that it will close highly-polluting and energy-guzzling factories over the next five years.