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2. Enhance the promotion of energy saving in daily practices, such as notices of switching
off unnecessary lighting and electrical appliances.
CUHK has implemented dif ferent policies and
programmes that coincide with the essence of the
HK3030 Campaign, and, to walk-the-walk, driving
strongly on the behavioural change among staff and
students. The Green Office Programme (GO!) launched
by CUHK in 2012 is the first and probably still is the
only of its kind amongst all educational institutions to
instil sustainability practices in daily office operations.
Participation in GO! is voluntary at present but will
be made compulsory for all CUHK offices in 2014.
Participating offices are required to fulfil at least half of
the simple and yet essential green actions on GO! Checklist. Energy conservation is no doubt
one of the four focus areas of GO!. Later this year, GO! will be further extended to individual
staff and students.
Another remarkable example is the ground breaking hostel
policy of Lee Woo Sing College in promoting energy saving with
the installation of sub meters and a smart meter system in its new
student hostel. All 300 rooms of Lee Woo Shing Dormitory have
sub meters installed to record the electricity consumption of each
room and the smart meter system allows students
to gauge their electricity consumption on a real time
basis. Students are given adequate free credits for
their electricity consumption on a monthly basis. If the
free credits are about to deplete, students will have to
top up the balance according to a progressive scale in
relation to their electricity consumption. Students can
save the unused credits of any month for use in summer months or even cash out
the remaining credit balance upon moving out of the hostel.
The hostel policy clearly works on financial incentive but it is not all about money. Students
immediately find the instant information displayed by the smart system about their energy
consumption intriguing and have started to experiment with the temperature settings of
air con and fridges to see how that would affect their credit balances. Very soon, students
realise that air conditioning is the biggest energy consumption factor and choose to open the
windows or turn on the fans instead of keeping the air con on in their rooms. After the first
semester, the average room electricity consumption dropped by 40-50%, thus showing how
a good policy coupled with facilities such as smart meter and information disclosure can help
shape the behaviours among students.
3. Establish a team of green ambassadors to encourage active
participation of the young generation in energy saving actions.
The Environmental Sustainability Ambassador Programme
has been up and running for several years already. The
ambassadors consist of both students and staff members. They
recognise the seriousness of climate change and how it will
affect the generations to come. They also acknowledge that
being ecologically responsible is part of their social duties. The
ambassadors are provided with training such as how to conduct
carbon audit for their offices and help spread the messages and
values of sustainability to their workplace or student community.
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