Global Perspective

In the early 1970s, an oil crisis caused the developed countries to take serious caution on their use of energy. These countries have started adopting a number of policies to improve energy efficiency in all sectors of their economies.

In the late 1980s, the recognition of the greenhouse effect brought a significant influence on worldwide energy policy. People at that time trended to pursue development in sustainability, that is defined as "development which meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs". The importance of energy as a tool for meeting this goal was acknowledged at every major United Nations (UN) conference in the 1990s, starting with the Rio Earth Summit (UN Conference on Environment and Development) in 1992. In the "Agenda 21" of the Rio Earth Summit, the United Nations and its member have strongly endorsed the goal of sustainable development. The Kyoto Protocol agreed in the UN Conference on Climate Change in 1997 also set out targets in cutting the greenhouse gas emission.

In 2015, Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Changes adopted the Paris Agreement in Paris, which aims to strengthen the global response to the threat of climate change by reaching 'carbon neutrality' between 2051 and 2100 and keeping a global average temperature rise this century below 2 degrees Celsius above per-industrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase even further to 1.5 degrees Celsius.

On 22 September 2020, President Xi Jinping noted that the Paris Agreement on climate change charted the course for the world to transition to green and low-carbon development and announced that China aims to have CO2 emissions peak before 2030 and achieve carbon neutrality before 2060. The Chief Executive, Mrs. Carrie Lam, in her Policy Address on 25 November 2020, also indicated that the Government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region would strive to achieve the goal of carbon neutrality before 2050.