The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) today announced its latest commitment to being a sustainability leader in Hong Kong by launching a renewable energy project that will include the installation of up to 8,000 solar panels at over 50 locations on campus. It will be Hong Kong's largest solar energy generation project when complete.
The system will generate up to 3 million units (kWh) of electricity each year - equivalent to the annual electricity consumption of more than 900 three-member households in Hong Kong1, and reduce 1.5 million kg of carbon emission per annum over a 25 year period. By joining CLP's Renewable Energy Feed-in Tariff (FiT) Scheme2, the project will generate around $160 million up to the end of the FiT Scheme in 2033. After paying off the costs of the installation, HKUST will receive an average of $4 million per year that will be reinvested in further campus energy efficiency and greenhouse gas reduction projects. Part of the system will also be dedicated as a living laboratory for the University's faculty and students to test out their ideas and projects related to solar energy systems. The first phase of construction began last month and the project will continue through 2021.
This project was developed under the University's sustainability strategic plan, the HKUST 2020 Sustainability Challenge set in 2016, where the university has been identifying large scale initiatives to reduce energy, greenhouse gases, and waste. Taking the opportunity of the FiT Scheme - which encourages the community to develop distributed renewable energy systems - HKUST will install thousands of best-in-class and highly-efficient monocrystalline solar panels, including both the conventional and flexible thin film PV panels.
