Companies are increasingly looking to leverage on the Sino-Singapore bilateral project Guangzhou Knowledge City (GKC) as a test-bed for green technologies and to conduct research and development activities. This has translated to another string of agreements being inked at a signing ceremony in Guangzhou yesterday.
Temasek unit Singbridge International and Guangzhou Development District (GDD), the project’s co-master planners and investors, signed five memorandum of understanding (MOUs) with multinational corporations (MNCs) from Europe and Singapore to develop smart city and eco-city products and solutions GKC.
The five companies are Netherlands’ Royal Philips Electronics, Germany’s Siemens, Swiss-Swedish firm ABB, Germany-headquartered Schweizer Energy and Ralos New Energies AG, as well as the joint-venture partnership between Singapore’s Enersolar and China’s Prosunpro.
GKC is located on a 123 sq km greenfield site, with about half of the area slated for development and the other half preserved for green spaces.
Zhang Guangning, secretary of the CPC Guangzhou Committee, Wong Kan Seng, designate-chairman of Singbridge, and Lim Chee Onn, chairman of Singbridge, witnessed the signing in Guangzhou yesterday.
Under the agreements, Philips (China) Investment Co Ltd plans to use GKC as a test-bed for product development in LED lighting systems and solutions with the aim of rolling out the products to other parts of China in future; while ABB (China) Ltd plans to use GKC as a test-bed for various solutions ranging from energy management, e-mobility to smart buildings and smart homes.
Siemens China is looking to cooperate with GKC in areas such as smart grids, intelligent traffic systems, green buildings and green hospital solutions and to partner local firms in customising solutions and technology transfer.
Schweizer Energy and Ralos New Energies AG are planning to set up Schweizer New Energy Research and Development Centre and South China Operations Headquarters in GKC.
As for Enersolar and Prosunpro, they plan to set up a joint venture company in GKC to conduct research and development on solar thermal systems, so as to manufacture and supply the products and solutions to eco cities.
