The Chinese mainland’s first batch of cross-border group trading of green electricity certificates (GECs) with Hong Kong was marked by a launch ceremony in Guangzhou, the capital of South China’s Guangdong Province, on October 14.
The trading session closed deals for about 100,000 green certificates, representing nearly 100 million kilowatt-hours of renewable energy.
The move marks the large-scale introduction of GECs for renewable energy from the Chinese mainland into the Hong Kong market.
It opens a channel between the mainland’s GEC market and the international green finance market of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, a landmark practice of collaborative innovation in green energy in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area.
The transactions adopted a “dual-agent” model. Six new energy power generation companies from the mainland, via the Shenzhen Green Power and Green Certificate Service Center, held group negotiations with Hong Kong users represented by HKEX’s Core Climate. The transactions were ultimately completed through the Guangzhou Power Exchange Center.
Nine Hong Kong institutions were involved in the trading. They are from a wide range of sectors including public services, banking and finance, real estate and property management, and education. With HKEX providing more convenient services to Hong Kong clients, the transactions enabled the compliant, orderly and traceable use of mainland green certificates.
The trades provide Hong Kong business entities with credible instruments for regulatory compliance, emission reductions and environmental, social and governance (ESG) disclosures. They also broaden value-realization channels for renewable energy projects on the mainland.
Hong Kong, as an international green finance hub, has strong demand for credible green electricity attributes.The Chinese mainland, for its part, leads globally in wind and solar installed capacity and has a full GEC lifecycle system covering issuance, trading, transfer, cancellation and traceability.
At the event, the Guangzhou Power Exchange Center and HKEX signed a comprehensive cooperation agreement. Both sides are advancing mechanism innovations to strengthen their market links.
The Guangzhou center is China’s largest GEC trading platform — accounting for over 60 percent of national GEC trading volume since 2025. It has completed multiple cross-border GEC deals with Hong Kong and Macao.
HKEX’s Core Climate is an important platform for sustainable development and green finance.
The two sides will leverage the national power market, renewable energy resources on the Chinese mainland and Hong Kong’s status as an international green finance hub to meet the green electricity consumption needs of Hong Kong-listed companies and multinationals.
(Executive editor: Zuo Shihan)
