Hong Kong battles smog

With pollution nearing crisis levels in Hong Kong, a few companies and organisations are doing their bit to ease the problem by installing their own renewable energy generators.

From a gym that powers lights by harnessing (using) the energy of its exercising patrons to an airline that has built a wind turbine to keep its offices going, they are slashing their demands on the electricity power stations blamed for much of the city's smog (smoky fog).

One of Hong Kong's fitness centres has come up with what appears to be the most novel scheme.

The gym has wired up some of its exercise equipment to capture the energy produced during workouts and convert it into electricity.

If a trial scheme at the downtown branch of the American chain works, then management hopes to expand it to all machines and eventually all its more than 400 gyms worldwide.

"It's a win-win deal - we save electricity and that means we produce fewer greenhouse gas emissions," a company spokesman said.

According to the scheme's mastermind, engineer Lucien Gambarota, up to 60 per cent of the gym's electricity costs could be immediately eliminated with the expansion of the scheme to all its exercise bikes and cross-training machines.

The technology used is very simple; most modern exercise machines feature a dynamo generator that powers the display panels that tell how fast it is running and how many calories gym users are burning.

"I simply connected a cable which feeds to a car battery," said Gambarota.

"It's not even an invention. It's merely an application."

Pollution has become a hot button issue in Hong Kong, which was clouded in choking fumes for at least a third of last year, a recent study found.

The problem was so bad that one side of the city's famous harbour was invisible from the other during at least 50 days of 2006, a problem that had tourists complaining and the key tourism industry concerned.

Business is also feeling its effects, with lobby groups claiming that companies and executives are refusing to locate here because of the poor air quality.

One government department has taken up the lead, installing solar panels on its new headquarters that will save up to 300,000 Hong Kong dollars of taxpayers' money in power bills each year.

"When we grouped all our satellite offices into one, we realised we could start making savings on electricity too," said electrical and mechanical services department engineer Joe Chan.

The programme has run for a year now and officials are considering extending it to a major new central harbour side government office about to be built.

"We only get some of the department's power needs from the panels, but it's a good start -something like 300,000 kilowatts/hour," he said.

City Times