Hong Kong will play a pivotal role in pushing for the use of sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) in an effort to raise the city’s status as an international aviation hub, the transport chief has pledged.

Secretary for Transport and Logistics Mable Chan also said on Tuesday that the government’s green fuel usage target of 1 to 2 per cent by 2030, announced after Chief Executive John Lee Ka-chiu’s policy address, was “pragmatic and realistic”.

“It is of utmost importance that we join hands to scale up the production of SAF, as it is currently the only practical means for international aviation to decarbonise,” she told the International Air Transport Association (IATA) World Sustainability Symposium hosted in Hong Kong.

“We adopted a vision to achieve a SAF consumption ratio of 1 per cent to 2 per cent for flights departing from Hong Kong International Airport by 2030 as a starting point to drive momentum.

“We want to be pragmatic and realistic … so we set a target which we hope to achieve. That is a starting point, and this should not preclude or hinder us from setting an even more aggressive target along the way.”

The city’s transition to the use of green fuel forms part of the airport’s efforts to achieve its goal of net-zero carbon emissions by 2050, 10 years earlier than mainland China’s goal of 2060, a bold step that could make it the world’s greenest by that time.