Actively Promoting Gas Appliance Safety in Restaurants

To further guarantee gas safety in the community, the EMSD conducted a territory-wide inspection campaign during the year, focusing on 1300 hotpot restaurants and other eateries using cassette cookers, so as to ensure that all their appliances bore the GU mark. During the inspections, we also stepped up our educational efforts, expounding on the importance of using appliances bearing the GU mark, and sharing safe operation guidelines to responsible persons of the restaurants. Furthermore, we have tightened regulations at the import and sale levels, including targeted inspections of retail stores and monitoring of online shopping platforms to intercept non-approved appliances at source and prevent them from entering the market. As for online platforms suspected of violating the import and sales requirements under the Gas Safety Ordinance, we would issue warnings and conducted follow-up investigations. EMSD officers even conducted their first-ever undercover operations by posing as customers to purchase cassette cookers without the GU mark for evidence collection. These efforts ultimately led to the successful prosecution against the non-compliant online shops, demonstrating our firm resolve to enforce the law rigorously.

Fully Promoting the Development of Hydrogen Energy

Over the past year, Hong Kong has made significant progress in the development of hydrogen energy. As of March 2025, the Inter-departmental Working Group on Using Hydrogen as Fuel has reviewed and granted agreement-in-principle to 18 trial projects of hydrogen energy. Among these, the trial of a hydrogen fuelled light rail vehicle as a non-revenue train in Tuen Mun, together with its hydrogen refuelling facility, and the use of hydrogen fuel cell generators to power a construction site office in Lok Ma Chau have been successfully completed. Moreover, the Gas Safety (Amendment) Ordinance 2025 was passed by the Legislative Council in July this year, and the EMSD is drafting the associated subsidiary legislation to comprehensively regulate the safety of hydrogen as fuel. Additionally, we have finished research and preliminarily formulated the approach of hydrogen standard certification suitable for Hong Kong, with a plan to consult the industry at the end of 2025. In terms of regional co-operation, the EMSD signed the Co-operation Arrangement with the SAMR in December 2024 to jointly promote the development of hydrogen energy. To strengthen the promotion of hydrogen applications and public education, we organised activities such as the Hydrogen Fuelled Street Washing Vehicle Naming and Drawing Contest, Hydrogen Zero Carbon STEAM Carnival and HydroRace Challenge 2025 over the past year, as well as the inaugural International Hydrogen Development Symposium in March 2025 to foster the exchange of hydrogen technologies both locally and internationally.