A clean green sheet on the Silk Road

Zhang said he believes the city's robust legal and financial systems that provide high-level protection for investors in high-risk and high-cost transnational projects, will help BRI projects secure the special administrative region's coveted financial rewards. "In the past five years, our Hong Kong company has helped secure around HK$1.6 billion ($204.5 million) in equity investments for infrastructure projects in the BRI countries, accounting for half of the total financing of BRI projects," he says.

As we dwell on the avalanche of doomsday theorists pontificating about depleting fossil fuels, a future atmosphere choked with carbon emissions, and humanity's submission to fatal plagues, set against today's impenetrable hazy skyline, we can take solace from the desert Abu Dhabi has transformed into a solar energy powerhouse, and that a frisson of clean energy along the Belt and Road Initiative is in the offing. But there is no room for complacency.

Contact the writer at jenny@chinadailyhk.com