HKEX Insight

Green technologies are advancing quickly, but scaling them to deliver measurable real-world impact remains a defining challenge, an HKEX-hosted accredited session at the World Economic Forum's 2026 Annual Meeting of the New Champions in Dalian heard.

“EVs, solar, batteries, new energy generation and transmission, green tech, food tech, agriculture tech – the innovation is there,” HKEX Chairman Carlson Tong noted in his opening remarks for the session.

“The question now is how to scale it so that it delivers measurable and scalable progress.”

The conversation that followed, moderated by HKEX's Group Chief Sustainability Officer Paul Chow, surfaced three requirements: mobilising financing at the right scale, building the policy conditions investors need, and connecting regional opportunity with global capital. 

 

 

The biggest challenge in the climate transition is no longer one of technology, panellists emphasised. Solar, batteries, wind and EVs are technologically mature; the gap is one of capital.

Reflecting on the company’s recent commitment to build the UK's largest wind turbine manufacturing base in Scotland, Zhang Chao, Co-President, Ming Yang Smart Energy Group, pointed to demand emerging in Europe.

The North Sea region, Europe's hub for offshore wind, has set a target of 120 gigawatts of installed capacity by 2030: “At its peak in past years, yearly installation delivery was four gigawatts,” said Zhang. “At that rate, it's going to take more than 30 years to reach their target.”

The scale of that gap, and the financing required to close it, is enormous.

Indeed, executing on green innovation is highly capital-intensive, with manufacturing capacity and global deployment all requiring sustained investment. But capital markets are demonstrating that they can mobilise that level of financing at meaningful scale.

Johnson Chui, HKEX Head of Global Issuer Services, pointed to CATL, the world's largest battery manufacturer, which raised US$5.3 billion at its Hong Kong IPO in May 2025 and tapped the market again for a further US$5 billion in an overnight follow-on this year, with proceeds earmarked for expanding the company's global manufacturing capacity, advancing its zero-carbon business and developing next-generation battery technologies.

"That shows you the power of the capital markets if used in the correct way," said Johnson.

But even where green technology is ready and capital is available, the two do not always meet.

Panellists pointed to a recurring problem: projects that are technologically feasible but financially unworkable, because the policy environment around them does not give investors enough certainty to commit.

Solving this requires governments to think differently about what they are doing, according to Elizabeth Thurbon, Professor of International Political Economy, UNSW Sydney and Director of the Green Energy Statecraft Project.

Investors need long-term contractual certainty, she noted, such as through government-backed offtake agreements, clear pricing commitments and other instruments that are more binding than production subsidies and tax incentives.

Because renewable energy projects are highly capital-intensive, with most of their costs locked-in upfront, even small reductions in financing costs deliver outsized reductions in the final price of the energy they produce.

“A one percentage point reduction in the weighted average cost of capital can reduce the cost of producing renewable electricity by around 10%,” noted Thurbon.

Ming Yang’s Zhang framed the same dynamic from the industry side.

"The policy consistency has to be there,” she said. “We have seen it in China, where consistent policy fosters confidence in the supply chain, and innovation in turn returns confidence to the development of projects.”

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Capital and policy can each create the conditions for green innovation to scale within a market. But without connectivity between regions of innovation and regions of capital, neither alone can deliver the pace and breadth the transition demands.

The centre of gravity, panellists agreed, is increasingly clear, with China now producing and deploying more solar panels, wind turbines, batteries and electric vehicles than any other country.

"China has really been at the forefront of this energy transition, with over 50% of the country’s energy capacity last year coming from renewable energies," observed HKEX’s Chui. And Hong Kong’s markets are a channel to take these breakthroughs to the world.

As the leading international gateway for Chinese companies to access global capital, Hong Kong's markets connect innovators in areas such as renewable technology, advanced manufacturing and AI with long-term, internationally diversified funding.

That role is increasingly evident in the green transition.

Hong Kong is now the world's leading EV fundraising market, with the new energy sector market cap quadrupling to US$585 billion over the past decade and IPOs in the sector drawing participation from investors across North America, Europe, the Middle East and Asia.

Figures like this “give us an indication of the potential appetite there is to participate in the scaling of green innovation,” noted HKEX Chairman Carlson Tong.

The work ahead is for capital, policy and markets to move at the pace innovation is already setting.