Energy Saving - The Haney Group Conservation Awareness

Overall energy usage in the city grew at a slower pace than the average economic growth in the 10 years to 2013, new data shows.

And from 2012 to last year, consumption of electricity alone fell 1.1 per cent.

One green group welcomed the official figures as a sign that the city was getting serious about saving energy. The statistics reflected public awareness of reducing energy consumption, Edwin Lau Che-fung, head of advocacy and education at Friends of the Earth, said.

"The slight drop is in a positive direction," he said. "It reflects a power-smart attitude among consumers and businesses."

The city recorded an overall energy balance last year of 300,284 terajoules, down from 322,938 terajoules in 2008, the Census and Statistics Department said in its annual report.

During that period, imports of electricity from the mainland decreased 5.2 per cent.

The energy balance is the sum of energy input - mostly imports of coal, oil and electricity - minus output, when these resources get transformed into energy.

Electricity generation made up the bulk of the balance, while the rest came from gas.

Commercial users remained the top guzzler of electricity last year, consuming 66 per cent of energy used. Households came second, despite falling three percentage points to 26 per cent. Industrial users consumed 7.3 per cent of electricity.

Overall energy usage rose 2.5 per cent from 2003 to 2013. Over the same period real GDP grew at an average of 4.5 per cent a year.

Environment officials have floated a pair of options on the future of Hong Kong's energy mix. One proposal involves drawing a third of the city's electricity from the mainland power grid.

Under fuel-mix proposals for 2023, mainland company China Southern Power Grid may export up to 15 billion kilowatt-hours a year to Hong Kong - an option that Secretary for the Environment Wong Kam-sing claims can help the city outperform its targets of cutting carbon emissions.

Higher electricity bills are in store no matter which option is chosen, Wong has warned.

Lau, a former member of the government's advisory council on the environment, said tougher energy and carbon reduction targets should be imposed on the city's two power suppliers.

"The government should also explain more about the two fuel-mix options," he said. "We need to know how much more electricity prices will go up and why.”

Energy Saving - The Haney Group New Ideas in Lighting

Ever since government regulations began phasing out the traditional light bulb in 2012, the once-simple visit to the lighting aisle has become an exercise in navigating a dizzying array of choices and terminologies, especially for new kinds of compact fluorescents and LEDs.

Now, those choices are about to become even more complicated. Two start-up companies are poised to begin selling bulbs that use entirely different technologies — one borrowed from heavy industry and the other from old-fashioned televisions — but meet the new energy standards.

Whether they can capture customers who remain stubbornly wedded to incandescent light is anybody's guess. But that both have come this far is an indication of how unsettled the consumer lighting market remains, despite years of promotion for the new energy-saving options.

"It's going to be a really long putt to try to replace the incandescent," said Mark Rea, director of the Lighting Research Center at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. "People hate change of any kind. We make light sources today that are better than incandescent by any metric at delivering the benefits you're expecting from lighting. But it's different."

Indeed, incandescent bulbs — whether leftover store inventory of standard lights or halogen models that meet the new regulations, which went fully into effect in January — outsell other types by far at big-box stores like Home Depot and Lowe's, lighting executives there say. In the last quarter of 2013, according to statistics from the National Electrical Manufacturers Association, incandescent bulbs accounted for 65 percent of shipments from manufacturers, with the remainder consisting of mainly compact fluorescents.

Even as government officials, manufacturers and retailers focus their efforts on improving and marketing LED technology, researchers and entrepreneurs have been pursuing others, convinced that none of the options on the market offer consumers a close enough match to the familiar light quality at a low enough price. LED bulbs, for example, offer light quality that many experts say is equal to or better than the traditional incandescent bulbs, but their price — often $10 a bulb or less after starting out several years ago at about twice that — has scared off consumers. 

Origami-like lightbulb worlds Energy Saving-The Haney Group

How many engineers does it take to change a light bulb? Three, it turns out. The founders of Hong Kong-based Nanoleaf – former engineering undergrads Gimmy Chu, Christian Yan and Tom Rodinger – are on a mission to reinvent the humble invention that has remain unchanged for over a century.

The result is both unexpected and beautiful. Nanoleaf’s LED bulb is a geeky origami project – its body is made of folded silicon instead of glass. According to the company, this design makes it extremely energy efficient.

“Being a scientist, Tom has an engineering perspective,” says Yan. “Why use an extra material like glass? Why not mold the circuit board in a shape of a light bulb?”

With every component designed from scratch, the bulb brings 87 percent energy savings compared to the existing LED variety. It produces 133 lumens-per-watts, almost double the efficiency of Philips’ 22-watt bulb. The design has another positive spin-off: more efficiency means less heat, making Nanoleaf’s bulb one of the coolest around. Literally.

At US$35 each, it isn’t too far beyond other LED bulbs, so the pricing isn’t prohibitive considering the long-term cost savings.

There’s a trade-off though. A more efficient light bulb has a lower color rendering index, which means it brings out less of a surrounding’s natural colors, making the environment less attractive. This has implications for the retail and food sector, as well as for discerning homeowners.

This is another engineering problem that the Nanoleaf team wants to solve. It will also introduce warmer-colored lighting, which homeowners tend to prefer, for the next iteration of the bulb.

The startup’s goal is to push the product into as many people’s hands as possible, which was why they decided to enter fundraising mode.