CLP powers ahead with ‘smart’ and ‘clean’ energy opportunities in Greater Bay Area just as it did 40 years ago
- CLP is deploying clean energy, smart city and digital energy infrastructure monitoring technologies in the Greater Bay Area to improve efficiency and enhance customer experience
- CLP has invested US$7.7 billion into 50 power projects in the mainland since 1979
Back then, the province did not have access to US dollars to pay CLP, which in turn did not want to accept yuan as it was not used outside mainland China then.
“The solution was to use barter trade,” recalled Chan Siu-hung, CLP’s managing director of China, who joined the firm in 1981. “We dispatched electricity to Guangdong from our plant in Fanling, while China gave us coal to fuel the plant.”
Since that barter trade, CLP has greatly expanded its footprint in China, ploughing some HK$60 billion (US$7.74 billion) into 50 electricity projects – spanning coal, hydro, nuclear, solar and wind power – in 15 provinces. Their combined generation capacity of 8,990 megawatts serves millions of households, factories and shops in the world’s second largest economy.
Fast-forward four decades, CLP is again playing a crucial role in enhancing energy security in mainland cities, while also helping to lower its carbon footprint and reducing infrastructure maintenance costs through deployment of digital technology.
With Beijing giving a big push to the Greater Bay Area initiative, which aims to enhance innovation and quality of growth in Hong Kong, Macau and nine Guangdong cities through closer economic integration, CLP is starting a new chapter of business development in the region, Chan said in an exclusive interview with the South China Morning Post.
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“A key element of the GBA blueprint is innovation,” Chan said. “CLP will focus on capital-light projects that provide innovative services to enhance customer experience in the region.”
This entails the deployment of artificial intelligence, “cloud” data storage and computing power and big data to make cities, buildings and energy infrastructure “smart” and “green”, he said. These will help to cut down energy consumption and make power generation and distribution infrastructure maintenance more efficient and cost effective, he added.
To tap into the opportunities, CLP – which has been implementing these technologies in Hong Kong in recent years – two years ago established a joint venture with a subsidiary of Tus-Holdings, a company affiliated to Beijing’s Tsinghua University.
It deploys clean energy, smart city and digital energy infrastructure monitoring technologies in small, localised industrial estates in the bay area and other mainland cities.
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A pilot is being rolled out in Fangchenggang, a city in the southwestern Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region. Industrial estates here are adopting digital systems that track consumption patterns and guide the generation and distribution of electricity, heating and air conditioning in an integrated fashion to save energy.
“If this project in Guangxi is successful, we would like to introduce it to the Greater Bay Area as well,” Chan said.
“Most GBA cities are now fairly developed and no longer have the space for big power projects,” Chan explained. “Also, demand growth is no longer driven by factories but rather by technology and innovation parks,” Chan said.
The company, which will celebrate its 120th anniversary next year, is 19 per cent owned by chairman Michael Kardoorie and his family. It was his father Lawrence who decided to expand CLP’s business into mainland China in 1979.
“We are proud to be a witness and participant in China’s 40 years of economic reform,” Chan said, adding CLP will focus on clean energy projects, including some quaint combinations.
“We have projects that integrate solar energy generation with flower farming, and compliment solar project with the raising of hair crabs and crayfish,” he said.
