Building Energy Policy in Asia - Building Energy Efficiency Ordinance (BEEO) in Hong Kong

Finally finished the 1st batch of essays and have time to do some revisions on the building energy policies that I am interested. Probably I can do some sharing on my blog and treat them as my revision notes as well.

Building energy related policies can be mainly categorized in 3 groups:

• Overview roadmaps and targets (Sustainable Blueprint in Singapore) 
• Compliance regulations (Building Energy Efficiency Ordinance in Hong Kong) 
• Market instruments (Carbon Cap-and-trade policy in Tokyo)

 Today, I will briefly introduce the Building Energy Efficiency Ordinance (BEEO in short) which just being implemented since 21st September 2012 in Hong Kong. BEEO mainly comprises of 2 parts:

• Building Energy Code (BEC) - for those newly constructed commercial buildings or they would like to undergo a major retrofit, they have to comply with the requirements as stated in BEC. For example, offices can only have 15 W/m^2 lighting power density at maximum.
• Energy Audit Code (EAC) - Owners of existing commercial buildings have to hire Registered Energy Assessors (REA) to perform energy audits for their buildings. They are performed in stages according to the age of buildings (Newest buildings are the 1st batch and they must do the audit in the 1st year after the policy is implemented). A certificate (only showing that you complied with the ordinance, not ratings on the certificate) will be issued afterwards and is valid for 10 years.   

Why commercial buildings? 

1. The energy consumption in HK by commercial buildings to residential buildings is in a portion of 2.5:1, so larger energy saving potential for commercial buildings. 
2. The ownership and tenancy of commercial buildings is easier to deal with. 
3. The building systems are relatively simple 

What is the significance of this policy?

1. The maximum requirements for BEC would restrain the energy consumption by the new commercial buildings.
2. EAC would provide valuable detailed energy data to the government for their policy intervention. 

Challenges 

1. There are many old buildings in HK, as the EAC requires them to fill in detailed information, e.g. efficiency of the chillers, they might not have the records for that. 

(The information is obtained from EMSD, HKSAR Government. More information is available by this website: http://www.beeo.emsd.gov.hk/en/mibec_beeo.html)