Green "canopy" on energy for German cities.

Due to the German government's sustainability programme, the country absorbs half the global production of solar panels. In fact, the Chinese mainland's solar panel industry mostly profits from a German boom in demand for cost-saving solar energy units, recently increasing global market production share beyond 28% compared to Germany's 20%.

Hong Kong is also becoming a more active player in solar panel production, with US-based DuPont due to open a solar energy research centre in the territory later this year, as well as a manufacturing facility in Shenzhen. The resultant crystalline silicon cell and module materials are aimed at industrial installation, as may be required in the German "green" building programme.

Energy saving in the housing sector is one of the German government's top priorities, to cope with rising energy costs and to comply with the Kyoto agreement to reduce the emission of CO2 by 250 million tonnes until 2020.

Germany has set up an attractive incentive scheme for home owners by supporting thermal building insulation improvements, investments in new efficient heating systems and the installation of solar panels by granting subsidies or by giving favourable loans.

Solar incentives to save power.

German home owners also have a special incentive to install solar panels on their roofs by being granted a subsidised tariff for power, which is fed into the electricity grid.

There's new legislation in Germany to support investment in renewable energy and energy efficient measures in the building sector.

Effective from this year, according to the Act on the Promotion of Renewable Energies, all new buildings will require the installation of renewable heating sources such as biomass, solar power or geothermal energy, to generate at least 14% of households' total energy consumption by the year 2020.

To make green building technology affordable, the government will back house builders and investors with an extra annual Euros500 million package.

German Environment Minister Sigmar Gabriel hopes that the new measures will help to strengthen Germany's position as a world leader in environmental technology and create up to 500,000 new jobs in 12 years.

A recent study by Deutsche Bank sees the construction sector as a big winner in environmental policy, estimating the additional accumulated business up to 2030 at Euros340 billion.

Green "trendsetters" could harness big consumers of green products

Attempting to be green trendsetters, some local German authorities even top the efforts of the federal government. Marburg, a city with a population of 60,000, recently made solar panels obligatory for all houses.

The country's financial capital, Frankfurt, also sees itself as a reservoir for ultra low energy, as used in so-called "passive houses".

To reach the passive standard of consuming less than 15 kWh/m² annually in heating, the buildings have to be designed as extremely thermally-efficient envelopes. They have to make use of passive solar gains and active solar panels, with mechanical ventilation and heat recovery systems.

"Ecotropolis" Frankfurt.

All new public sector schools, kindergartens and gymnasiums are designed according to the passive house standard. The city-owned housing development company ABG Frankfurt Holding, has built some 600 passive apartments - more than any other company in the world.

Planners at AS&P, one of the world's top urban development consultancy companies (and designer of the master plan for the Beijing Olympic Games 2008), are currently developing the city's new vision called Frankfurt 2030, which envisions an ecotropolis, fully eco-friendly in municipal services and housing.

Smaller-scale solar needs could swell

In such an environment of cost saving, items such as solar powered chargers for mobile phones and laptops could soar.

However, the production line for solar power chargers is far from oversubscribed, with Mainland suppliers numbering less than 20 amid hundreds of companies that produce the traditional plug-in devices.

Solar power for the iPod.

One supplier in Hong Kong, Hankey Asia Ltd, has expanded into solar power chargers to broaden its application range. The mobile phone solar power charger is just one of many applications for tapping solar energy technology and the line currently accounts for only 5% of Hankey's total revenue. The mobile phone solar power chargers are made exclusively for OEM and ODM clients.

Hong Kong-based EDP Worldwide Co Ltd has OEM customers on a per-order basis. Its buyers are mostly from the retail and promotions markets.

By contrast to the Chinese mainland, Taiwan's solar power charger supplier base makes up more than 60% of its overall supplier base for mobile phone chargers. The region has about 20 suppliers of solar power chargers, but only a handful of these companies actually pursue mass production - so far.

from Peter Staab, Frankfurt Office and
Martin Evan-Jones, Hong Kong Head Office