By Yongchang Chin
CLP Holdings Ltd. is seeing rising demand for green-energy services and will consider partnerships with investors to fund decarbonization efforts, it said Monday.
The Hong Kong electric utility company also said it had ended 2021 “with the group’s commitment to capital expenditure at a high level, mainly driven by the decarbonization investments in Hong Kong, Mainland China, Australia and India.”
CLP said it spent 13.15 billion Hong Kong dollars (US$1.68 billion) on capital expenditure in 2021, up from HK$7.93 billion the previous year.
The company also said in its latest earnings statement that it was doubling down on its green-energy transition.
“The energy crisis in Europe, a power crunch in China and higher fuel prices in many regions have re-emphasized the need for careful planning and coordination to manage the energy transition smoothly,” Richard Lancaster, the company’s executive director, said in a statement.
CLP in September 2021 introduced a goal of having net-zero emissions by 2050, and has been working to decarbonize its electricity production, moving away from coal and toward clean-energy sources like hydrogen. It also aimed to have a complete phase-out of coal-fired power generation assets in its portfolio by 2040.
In Hong Kong, the company said it had continued to make investments to support the city’s green-energy transition, noting the ongoing expansion of its Black Point Power Station and a new offshore liquefied natural gas terminal to help switch Hong Kong’s reliance on coal to natural gas, the world’s cleanest-burning fossil fuel. The company’s Indian unit, Apraava Energy, is targeting to double the size of its portfolio in the next two to three years, driven by renewable energy investments and acquisitions, CLP said.
The company also said its Australian unit, EnergyAustralia, is developing several large projects–including the Tallawarra B power plant, the Wooreen battery storage system and the Kidston hydro energy facility–which will support the country’s energy grid.
EnergyAustralia is also exploring the use of other technologies, including hydrogen fuel, microgrids, batteries and energy storage systems, CLP said.
“As one of the largest integrated utility companies in the Asia-Pacific region, CLP’s approach to tackling the threats of climate change has a dual focus: to progressively decarbonize our business operations while providing sustainable and commercially viable energy solutions that will deliver net-zero for this generation and the next,” it said.
Write to Yongchang Chin at yongchang.chin@wsj.com
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