Making Energy Visible: How HKBU's Smart Energy Community Research is Rethinking Low-Carbon Transitions
Since 2021, researchers at the Hong Kong Baptist University (HKBU) Asian Energy Studies Centre and Department of Geography have been exploring a fundamental question facing cities worldwide:
How can communities achieve sustained, long-term low-carbon behavioural change?
Their answer goes beyond technology alone.
Through a five-year interdisciplinary research project funded by the Research Grant Councils’ Research Impact Fund (RIF), involving more than 610 households, 13 integrated datasets, and four diverse Hong Kong communities, the team led a 20-member global research consortium to develop and test a new Smart Energy Community (SEC) Model—combining big data analytics, smart technologies, and deep engagement to understand how communities can become active partners in the transition towards a low-carbon future.
Today, the research has expanded beyond Hong Kong to Seoul, Bristol, and Shenzhen, while informing policy discussions, generating new international collaborations, and laying the foundation for the team’s latest GRF research on AI-enabled and community-centred energy transitions.
KEY IMACTS
Over 600 households participating across four Hong Kong communities
13 integrated datasets connecting energy, behavioural, environmental and spatial data
3,000+ participants engaged through 178 workshops
260 Junior Energy Scientists trained through school partnerships
20+ researchers across 7 universities connected through the Asian Low-carbon Universities-cities Network (ALUN)
Beyond Technology: Understanding the Human Side of Energy Transition
Around the world, governments have committed to ambitious carbon neutrality targets. Yet while advances in renewable energy and smart technologies continue to accelerate, one question remains unresolved:
How can household behavioural change be sustained over the long term?
Although households play a critical role in reducing carbon emissions, most existing approaches focus primarily on top-down policy interventions or technological solutions. Less understood is how communities themselves can become active participants in driving and sustaining low-carbon transitions.
This question formed the starting point of HKBU's RIF project:
"Exploring the Role of Big Data Analytics in Promoting Smart Low-carbon Cities: A Human-centered, Community-based and Deep Engagement Approach in Hong Kong."
Rather than viewing residents simply as electricity consumers, the project explored how communities could become proactive, collaborative partners in shaping their own low-carbon future.
Building a New Smart Energy Community Model
Led by the HKBU’s Asian Energy Studies Centre and Department of Geography, the research brought together an interdisciplinary team spanning geography, computer science, physics, artificial intelligence, geographical information systems, visual arts, and energy governance.
In 2021, the project also established the Asian Low-carbon Universities-cities Network (ALUN), bringing together more than 20 researchers from universities across Asia including Stanford, Kyoto University, Seoul National University, the Korea Advanced Institute of Science & Technology, National TaiZwan University, University of the West of England, Bristol, York St. John University, and City University of Hong Kong, to strengthen interdisciplinary collaboration on energy transition research.
At the heart of the project was the development of a new Smart Energy Community (SEC) Model, integrating three complementary components:
Data – real-time electricity monitoring, weather information, spatial mapping, and big data analytics
Technology – smart electricity sensors, mobile applications, virtual reality, and data visualisation
Deep Engagement – envisioning workshops, social learning activities, and deliberative community dialogues
The project also built a rich research dataset comprising 13 types of data, bringing together real-time smart sensor readings, weather data, quantitative surveys, and qualitative insights from interviews, workshops, and focus groups. Importantly, the research combined citizen-sourced data, such as household solar production data, with expert knowledge including solar assessment modelling.
These diverse datasets contributed to the development of the Asian-European Energy Map, an online platform integrating and displaying energy and environmental data through a spatial approach. Together, they created a research infrastructure through which household behaviour, energy use, environmental conditions, and community contexts could be examined in relation to one another.
Rather than treating technology as the solution itself, the SEC Model examined how data, technology, and human participation could reinforce one another to support meaningful and long-lasting behavioural change.
Turning Communities into Living Laboratories
The project was implemented across four Hong Kong communities—Fairview Park, Sheung Shui, Sai Kung, and South Horizons—turning them into living laboratories for testing technology and participatory engagement in real-world settings.
More than 600 households participated between 2021 and 2025, using smart electricity sensors and a mobile app to visualise real-time energy consumption. Other interventions included blockchain-based incentive schemes, household energy achievement cards, virtual reality community energy games, and community energy-saving challenges.
Alongside these digital tools, deep engagement activities—including envisioning, social learning, and deliberative polling workshops—brought residents together and extended the research into the wider community. What the Research Revealed
Our project’s key research contribution is its empirical evidence on household energy behaviour, demonstrating how digital tools, when combined with sustained community engagement, can support measurable behavioural change.
Across the four communities, households participating in the intervention programme reduced electricity consumption by an average of 2.88%, while electricity use among the control group increased by 7.98%.
Post-project surveys also showed significantly greater improvements among intervention households in five key areas:
Energy literacy
Environmental awareness
Digital trust
Perceived benefits of smart technologies
Sense of community
The research further found that app-based intervention alone could strengthen energy knowledge, attitudes, confidence in taking action, and reported energy-saving behaviour. Different engagement methods also produced measurable learning outcomes: in pilot workshops, more than 75% of participants agreed that the project's virtual reality energy community game helped them understand low-carbon communities and offered a new way of experiencing energy transition.
Researchers also found that some households used air conditioning up to four months later than others, revealing significant variations in energy behaviour for cooling. This substantial variation highlighted opportunities for demand flexibility by potentially shortening Hong Kong's air-conditioning season. The differences were associated not only with temperature and humidity, but also with household characteristics, lifestyle attitudes, comfort expectations, and perceptions of financial incentives.
At the community level, the research identified five critical processes required to scale community-driven low-carbon energy transitions:
Envisioning
Leadership
Experimentation and social learning
Network building
Institutionalisation
These processes highlighted the importance of moving beyond individual behaviour. Through community engagement, participants began to see themselves not simply as isolated electricity consumers, but as proactive members of a wider energy network capable of envisioning, learning, deliberating, and acting collectively.
Finally, the project demonstrated that context matters. Seven attitudinal factors—including innovativeness, collectiveness, and financing capability—were found to shape how communities approached low-carbon transitions.
Together, these findings show that successful smart energy transitions depend on more than access to technology. They require an understanding of who uses energy, how behaviour differs, whom communities trust, and how local social and spatial conditions shape people's willingness and ability to change.
From Research to Wider Community Impact
Beyond participating households, the project worked with more than 10 schools, 8 businesses, 14 NGOs, and 2 government actors, while 178 workshops engaged over 3,000 participants and the mobile app recorded 900+ downloads.
Education was a key pathway for longer-term impact. Through the Junior Energy Scientist Programme, 260 students learned about household energy use, with one participating school subsequently incorporating STEM workshops into its Grade 6 science curriculum.
The project also collaborated with Hong Chi Association’s solar schools and engaged HKBU undergraduates through service learning, extending energy learning and capacity building across schools, universities, and community organisations.
Taking the SEC Model Beyond Hong Kong
The research is now extending beyond Hong Kong. Since 2023, the SEC Model has expanded to Seoul and Bristol, and most recently to Shenzhen, creating new opportunities to examine how smart energy transitions unfold across different urban, social, and cultural contexts.
The completion of the RIF project has not marked the end of this research. Instead, its findings and methodologies have provided a foundation for a series of three new studies supported by the Research Grants Council's General Research Fund (GRF). These projects extend the SEC research in three interconnected directions: cross-cultural perspectives on social learning (GRF 2023), smart data-enabled energy networks and scalability (GRF 2025), and AI-assisted simplified energy auditing (AI-SEA)(GRF 2026).
Building on the project's pioneering use of data visualisation, virtual reality, gamification, and social learning, our latest GRF research is exploring how AI and immersive technologies can further support more inclusive and responsive approaches to low-carbon transition.
Yet the central lesson of the past five years remains fundamentally human. Technology can make energy visible, but lasting transition depends on people—how they understand energy, how they change everyday practices, and how communities learn, participate, and act together.
As cities around the world search for pathways towards carbon neutrality, the SEC research offers a new way of thinking about the challenge: not simply how to build smarter energy systems, but how to empower communities to proactively shape the low-carbon futures they want to live in.
Full titles of latest Research Projects:
Research Grant Council’s General Research Fund, “Scaling up decarbonisation through voluntary, AI-assisted simplified energy auditing (AI-SEA) in the residential sector in Hong Kong”, Grant awarded: HK$994,540; Principal Investigator: D. Mah (HKBU), in collaboration with R. Chen (HKBU), D. Cheung (HKBU), M. Leung (CityU), S. Tai (HKBU), Sun-Jin Yun (Seoul National University); Study period: October 2026 - September 2028 (24 months)
Research Grant Council's General Research Fund, “Empowering Net-Zero Cities: Unleashing the Full Potential of Smart Data-Enabled Networks and Scalability from energy communities – A Comparative Study of Urban Living Labs (ULLs) in Hong Kong, Seoul, and Bristol” (Project Ref.: 12612825), Grant awarded: HK$1,299,210; Principal Investigator: D. Mah (HKBU), in collaboration with D. Cheung (HKBU), B. Choi (HKBU), K. Chun (University of the West of England, UWE), T. Fung (HKBU), L. Fogg-Rogers (UWE), H. Kim (Korea Advanced Institute of Science & Technology, KAIST), K. C. Kwok (HKBU), M. Leung (CityUHK), A. Lo (York St. John), L, B. McLellan (Kyoto University), L. Rodrigues (University of Nottingham), A. Siu (Stanford University), S. Tai (HKBU), P. Wong (Lingnan University), Sun-Jin Yun (Seoul National University); Study period: July 2025 - December 2027 (30 months).
Research Grant Council’s General Research Fund, “Delivering carbon-neutral goals through smart social learning in communities: A cross-cultural analysis of three Asian cities (Kyoto, Seoul and Hong Kong)”, Grant awarded: HK$997,946; Serving as the Principal Investigator, in collaboration with D, Cheung (HKBU), B. Choi (HKBU), H. Kim (KAIST), B. McLellan (Kyoto University), A. Siu (Stanford), Sun-Jin Yun (Seoul National University); Study period: Jan 2023- Jun 2025 (30 months).
Research Team Acknowledgement
Role | Name/Post | Unit/Department/ University/Organisation |
Project Coordinator | Dr Mah, Daphne Ngar-yin / Associate Professor | Asian Energy Studies Centre/Department of Geography/Hong Kong Baptist University |
Co-Principal investigators
| Prof Alistair Cole / Honorary Professor | Department of Government and International Studies/ Hong Kong Baptist University |
Prof Benjamin Moorhouse / Assistant Professor | Department of Education Studies, Hong Kong Baptist University | |
Dr Chan, Mau Hing / Lecturer | Department of Physics/Hong Kong Baptist University | |
Dr Cheung, Man-wai, Darren / Research Fellow | Asian Energy Studies Centre/Department of Geography/Hong Kong Baptist University | |
Dr Choi, Koon Kau, Byron / Associate Professor | Department of Computer Science/Hong Kong Baptist University | |
Dr Chun, Kwok Pan /Assistant Professor | Department of Geography & Environmental Management/University of the West of England | |
Prof Chung, Him / Associate Professor | Sheridan Institution of Higher Education | |
Prof Guo, Yike / Vice President of Research and Development | Department of Computer Science/Hong Kong Baptist University | |
Prof Hana Kim / Associate Professor | School of Digital Humanities and Computational Social Sciences, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology | |
Dr Kwok, Kam Chau / Lecturer | Department of History/ Hong Kong Baptist University | |
Prof Laura Fogg-Rogers / Associate Professor | Department of FET-Engineering, Design and Mathematics, University of the West of England Bristol | |
Dr Lo, Tek Sheng, Kevin / Associate Professor | David C. Institute for East-Lam West Studies/Department of Geography/Hong Kong Baptist University | |
Dr Mak Kwun Ling Bonnie / Post-doctoral Research Fellow | David C. Institute for East-Lam West Studies/ Hong Kong Baptist University | |
Mr Ng, Siu King, Kingsley / Assistant Professor | Academy of Visual Arts/Hong Kong Baptist University | |
Prof Pan, Janice / Associate Professor | Department of Translation, Interpreting and Intercultural Studies, Hong Kong Baptist University | |
Prof Tai Kin-hon Samson / Professor of Practice | Department of Accountancy, Economics and Finance, Hong Kong Baptist University | |
Dr Woo, L. Y. Karen / Senior Lecturer | School of Continuing Education, Hong Kong Baptist University | |
Prof Wong, P.Y Paulina / Associate Professor | Science Unit, Lingnan University | |
Prof Zhou, Qiming / Emeritus Professor | Department of Geography/Hong Kong Baptist University | |
Partner(s)
| Ms Kim, Soyoung | Sungdaegol Energy Transition Town, Village.Living Cooperative, and Wattmall |
Mr Ng, Simon / Chief Executive Officer | Business Environment Council | |
Mr Lam, Edwin M. W. / General Secretary | Hong Chi Association | |
Prof Nishimura, Kiyoshi / General Manager | Sales Department & Distributed Energy Resources / Kansai Electric Power Co., Inc. | |
Mr Tam, Barry / Senior Property & Facility Manager | Metropolis Plaza Management Services Office / Kai Shing Management Services Limited | |
Mr To, Kar Hing Eystein / Principal | Buddhist Wing Yan School | |
Dr Yau, Wing Kwong / Chief Executive Officer | Environmental Association | |
Mr Leung, Wai Kin / Head of Customer Business Development | Hongkong Electric | |
Mr Ng, Hon Lam, Tom / Campaigner | Greenpeace | |
Collaborator(s)
| Dr Deng, Lifeng / Associate Professor | School of Communication/Sun Yat-sen University |
Dr Huang, Liling / Associate Professor | National Taiwan University | |
Mr Hui, Dennis / Assistant Director of Estates (Environmental Health and Safety) | Estates Office/Hong Kong Baptist University | |
Dr Lam, King Hang / Lecturer | Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering/The University of Hong Kong | |
Dr Lee, Taedong / Professor | Department of Political Science and International Studies/Yonsei University | |
Prof Leung, Kwok Hi, Michael / Professor | School of Energy and Environment/City University of Hong Kong | |
Prof McLellan, Benjamin / Professor | Graduate School of Energy Science/Kyoto University | |
Dr Siu, Alice / Honorary Director of Deliberation and Panel Studies | Hong Kong Public Opinion Research Institute | |
Prof Yun, Sun-Jin / Professor | Graduate School of Environmental Studies/Seoul National University |
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