Search

Social enterprise (SE) has experienced rapid development over the last 15 years in Hong Kong both in quantity and quality of its solutions and models and the diversity of social issues tackled. In this chapter, we reflect on the journey of the rise of this sector in Hong Kong, the key drivers of and players in the sector, and some of the encouraging and discouraging lessons we learned so far––as observers and operators––in the sector. However, SE are not alone since there are other newer developments such as Certified B Corporation (B Corp)––starting six years ago in Hong Kong––which has a shared interest but follows a different trajectory and model closer to the business world. Following these insights, we conducted focus groups to further understand key businesspeople and social enterprise players’ views about what B Corp can do to achieve “shared prosperity” in Hong Kong. While this chapter does not offer a formula to resolve Hong Kong’s problems, it provides some useful recommendations on the applicability of B Corp as a framework to inspire and guide mainstream businesses to become purpose-driven companies that strike a healthy balance of people, profit, and planet.

Conceptually, hybrid photovoltaic/thermal (PV/T) system is superior to conventional side-by-side photovoltaic (PV) and solar thermal (ST) system due to the increase of energy output per unit collector coverage area. The current study aims to demonstrate the advantages of applying a liquid-based PV/T system over a side-by-side system in a real office scale building to support its electricity and hot water demand via computer program simulations of the explicit dynamic PV, ST and PV/T system models. Second, an economic analysis considering the time value of money is presented to evaluate the viability of installing a solar collector system with the adoption of PV/T instead of the side-by-side option. The discounted payback period, which has considered the maintenance and parts replacement costs, of the PV/T system design option is found to be encouraging. The sensitivity analysis shows that even under large variations of different factors in the calculation model, positive net present value is dominant in most cases within the analysis time period. The study reflects desirable potential of incorporating of PV/T technologies in real office buildings under subtropical climate region like Hong Kong.

This article introduces the design of an indirect thermosyphon solar water heating system coupled with a parallel circular tube rings type heat exchanger. The proposed heat exchange coil set is able to provide similarly of heat exchange areas of a comparable size helical coil but reduces the friction loss of the thermosyphon fluid flow. The design can also maintain the thermal stratification along the vertical height of the storage water tank. Hence, the thermal efficiency of the solar water heater is improved as compared with a same system but coupled with a comparable size helical coil and shell type storage water tank. Detailed mathematical model development from individual components to the integration of whole system are described. The transient system model is simulated by a self-developed FORTRAN program. The experimental and simulations results of the solar thermal system are fully presented in this paper. Comparison of both results shows good agreements and convinces the accuracy of the entire system models as well as the suitability of the computational method. The effectiveness of the proposed heat exchange coil set is evaluated by its NTU value which is computed by program simulation. The NTU value reveals that the overall efficiency of the solar thermal system can be improved by further physical design optimization. Simulation results analyses also consolidate the enhancement of the thermosyphon flow rate (in other words, the efficiency) of the proposed design over the helical coil design as expected.