Hong Kong's Chief Executive Donald Tsang on Tuesday pledged to push ahead with plans to improve the city's air quality by reducing emissions from local power plants using a trading scheme.
"I am determined to ensure that this standard is fully complied with by the power companies," Tsang said in a statement in southern China's Guangdong province ahead of a conference with mainland officials on Wednesday.
"It is important. No one can ignore it. But as far as the emission trading scheme is concerned, this is designed to help them, not to stand in their way," he said.
The scheme caps emissions and would allow Hong Kong power companies to trade emissions quotas with their mainland Chinese counterparts.
Tsang warned that the two coal-burning Hong Kong power companies labelled the city's worst polluters, Hong Kong Electric and CLP Holdings, could face higher costs if they failed to participate in the scheme.
But Hong Kong Electric said it had no plans to join the trading scheme, while CLP Holdings remained non-committal.
Ways to tackle rising pollution will be high on the agenda at Wednesday's conference with mainland officials.
Tsang said he was confident agreed emission cuts of up to 55 percent by 2010 in four major air pollutants including sulphur dioxide by will be achieved.
Tsang, who visited a power plant in south China's Dongguan city on Tuesday, was to meet with Guangdong officials on the progress of the initiatives launched in 2002.
The talks represent the latest effort to tackle Hong Kong's air pollution problem.
Air quality in the city has deteriorated so much that smog reduced visibility to less than one kilometer (about half a mile) on more than 50 days last year.
