三个理由让你相信中国正在进行的可再生能源热潮 [美国媒体]

Three Reasons to Believe in China's Renewable Energy Boom 

三个理由让你相信中国正在进行的可再生能源热潮

It has atrocious air pollution. It fears climate change. And it wants to be a "manufacturing monster" in renewables too.

中国有着严重的空气污染；中国重视气候变化；中国有成为可再生能源制造巨头的抱负。


 
A worker cleans a solar panel on top of a factory building in Baoding City. China is installing a soccer field's worth of solar panels every hour.

照片：中国保定，一名工人正在清洗工厂房顶上的光伏板。中国每小时新安装的光伏板相当于一个足球场大小。

Photograph by Sean Gallagher, National Geographic Creative
By Beth Gardiner
PUBLISHED May 12, 2017
Haining, ChinaThe squares of silicon are hardly thicker than sheets of paper, each about six inches by six, with narrow stripes of silver. They come into the factory by the thousands, stacked in cardboard boxes, and within hours, they’ll be ready to leave again.

中国海宁。一片片正方形的硅晶片像纸一样薄，6英寸长，6英寸宽，布满细细的银色纹路。成千上万片这样的硅晶片进入工厂，装满了无数纸箱子，然而仅仅几个小时，它们就变成成品再次踏上旅途。

The squares are solar cells, and in this plant two hours’ drive from Shanghai, workers in bright blue uniforms and white lab coats run the machines that assemble them, row by row, into more familiar-looking panels, ready to be installed on rooftops or in large arrays and begin turning sunlight into electricity.

这些硅晶片，就是太阳能电池。在这个距离上海2小时车程的工厂里，身着亮蓝色工作服或白色实验大褂的工人们操作着机器，把这些硅晶片排成一列列，安装在我们熟悉的光伏板上。现在，这些光伏板已经准备好被安装在房顶上或是更大的发电阵列里，开始将温暖的阳光转化为电能。

Chinese manufacturing has changed the economics of renewable power around the world, making solar generation cost-competitive with electricity from fossil fuels like natural gas and even coal. It has brought change closer to home too, as China rolls out the world’s biggest investment in clean energy—motivated in part by a desire to ease the atrocious air pollution that kills an estimated 1.1 million of its people every year.

中国制造已经改变了全世界的可再生能源经济，使得太阳能发电的成本能够与传统的化石能源——天然气甚至煤炭——竞争。这些改变同样发生在中国国内，中国已成为世界上最大的清洁能源投资国——某种程度上，是为了应对中国那每年导致110万人死亡的严重空气污染。

“The installation rates are absolutely mind-blowing,” says , an energy and air pollution expert at Greenpeace in Beijing. China added 35 gigawatts of new solar generation in 2016 alone. “That’s almost equal to Germany’s total capacity, just in one year,” Myllyvirta says.
Every hour, China erects another wind turbine and installs enough solar panels to cover a soccer field, according to Greenpeace estimates.

“（光伏发电的）安装率是惊人的。”Lauri Myllyvirta是来自北京绿色和平组织的能源与空气污染专家。中国仅在2016年一年内，就新增太阳能发电设备达35千兆瓦。“几乎相当于德国全国的总和，而这是在仅仅一年内完成的。”Myllyvirta说。
据绿色和平组织估测，每一小时，中国就新建一座新的风能发电机组，新安装足以覆盖一个足球场的光伏板。


 
Workers at a Jinko facility in Shangrao fabricate solar cells.

照片：上饶，晶科太阳能的工人们正在制造太阳能电池。

Photograph by Zhuo Zhongwei, Imaginechina via AP

Beyond Coal

煤炭之后

After years of ignoring the air quality crisis that has resulted from decades of breakneck industrialization, China’s leaders have finally begun trying to solve it. And because coal is the source of an estimated 40 percent of the most dangerous pollution particles in the country’s air , finding alternatives to it has become a crucial priority. China aims to get 20 percent of its energy from renewable sources by 2030, and it recently announced it would spend $360 billion on the effort in just the next three years.

中国几十年来急速工业化，忽视了空气污染带来的环境危机，现在中国的领导人们终于开始着手解决这个问题。由于煤炭贡献了40%最危险的空气污染成分，寻找其替代能源就成了首要大事。中国计划至2030年，可再生能源须占到能源消费总量的20%。中国近来更宣布在接下来的三年间向该领域投入资金3600亿美元。

In the Yangtze River Delta, a region known for its economic dynamism, Jinko Solar is one of the companies that has sprung up to meet that demand. It exports its solar equipment too, to the United States, Europe, Latin America, the Middle East and elsewhere. Last year, it produced panels with an electricity-generating capacity equivalent to about 10 typical coal-fired plants.

长江三角洲，中国着名的经济高速增长区，晶科太阳能只是众多响应国家对新能源需求的企业之一，该公司的光伏设备出口至美国、欧洲、拉丁美洲、中东乃至世界的任何角落。去年一年间，晶科公司生产的光伏发电能力相当于十个标准煤炭火电站发电能力的总和。


Here in Haining, the factory floor is clean and bright, and a low whoosh is the only noise as red, robotic arms lift and twist, moving the panels from one station to the next. Workers, some in white masks that cover their faces and heads, others sporting colored baseball-style caps, test and tweak as layer is added to layer and the parts are sealed together into ready-to-go modules, wires dangling from a small black box mounted on the back.

回到海宁，这里的厂房明亮洁净，机器安静的运转声是这里唯一的噪音，红色的工业机器人手臂不断地抬起、转动，将一块块光伏板移动到下一个加工点。工人们有的戴着白帽子白口罩，有的戴着彩色的棒球帽，正在不断地进行测试和修正，部件一层层地添加，零件被固定在成品模板上，安装在光伏板背面的黑色小盒子里摇晃着探出一根根电缆。

Air pollution isn’t the only reason China is so serious about renewables, but it’s a powerful one. And it was a big part of what put President Xi Jinping in a position to announce, in a landmark 2014 deal with President Obama, that China’s emissions of planet-warming carbon dioxide would peak around 2030, a pledge that became the centerpiece of its commitments under the Paris climate agreement.

空气污染并不是中国发展可再生能源的唯一动因，但却是很重要的一个。同时，空气污染也是迫使习近平主席在2014年同奥巴马总统会面时，历史性地宣布中国的碳排放将在2030年左右达到顶峰的重要因素。这个宣言也成为中国在巴黎气候协定中所做出的承诺的指导思想。

It appears now to be ahead of schedule in meeting that goal. Official figures can be unreliable, but they show that coal consumption, the main driver of China’s carbon emissions, fell in 2016 for the third straight year. And because China has clearly decided that cutting coal use—the fuel powers much of its heavy industry as well as providing electricity— is in its own interest, it’s a trend that’s likely to continue even as the United States, under President Trump, abandons Obama’s climate agenda.

中国似乎能够提前实现这个目标。官方公布的数据或许不太可靠，但其数据表明，截至2016年，中国的主要能源煤炭在能源消费中所占的比例已经连续三年下降了。中国已经明确认识到减少煤炭使用——尽管煤炭是其重工业和电力工业的主要能源——是符合中国的根本利益的，这是大趋势，即使川普总统领导下的美国推翻了奥巴马政府的气候政策，这个大趋势也是不可逆的。

Because China accounts for half the world’s coal consumption, that’s good news not just for the health of those who must breathe its air, but also for the wider effort to check runaway global warming.

中国的煤炭消费占到世界煤炭消费的50%，因此中国减少煤炭使用不仅对呼吸中国空气的人们的身体健康，同样对于全世界对抗气候变暖的事业，都是利好消息。

“I think it’s fair to say that it wouldn’t have happened as fast and with as little resistance as it has if it hadn’t been for the air pollution motivation,” Myllyvirta says. “It’s really hard to argue against when you’re sitting in Beijing,” breathing its toxic air.

“我认为可以这么说，如果没有空气污染这个动因，事情不会发生得如此之快，阻力不会如此之小。”Myllyvirta说，“只要你待在北京（呼吸着带毒的空气），你会深刻认识到这句话的正确性。”（译注吐槽：请你去美国呼吸香甜的空气）

Kinks in the Grid

电网中的不和谐

The renewables rollout has not been without its troubles. Vast fields of wind turbines have been erected in the country’s sparsely populated northwest, far from the big cities where electricity is most needed, and the construction of transmission lines to move all that power has failed to keep up.

中国的可再生能源热潮并不是一片祥和。在这个国家广袤无人的大西北，建设着一座座规模宏大的风力发电站，远离电力需求旺盛的大城市，而配套的输电线路却没能跟上脚步。

“They set up these huge wind farms and they don’t have connections to the grid,” says Antung Liu of Indiana University Bloomington. “They just have this attitude that ‘We’ll build it, and hopefully we’ll be able to use it later.’”

“他们建设了巨大的风力电站，却没有将它们连接到电网里。”来自印第安纳大学伯明顿分校刘安东（译注：音译）说，“他们有一种敷衍态度，那就是我先把它建好了放这儿，总有一天用得上。”


What’s more, grid operators have shown a bias toward coal production, so renewable power has sometimes gone unused even when the physical connections are there. Greenpeace estimates that 19 percent of Chinese wind power was wasted in the first three quarters of last year.

更严重的是，电网公司似乎偏爱烧煤的火电，因此有时候即使可再生能源电站已经连接上了电网，也很少被使用。据绿色和平组织估测，去年的前三个季度，中国约有19%的风力发电产能被浪费掉了。

Leaders are now starting to reckon with those issues, installing new power lines and focusing on building smaller wind and solar farms in populated areas.

中国的领导人们已经开始着手解决此类问题，开始建设更多的输电线路，并在人口稠密的地区建设相对小一些的风力/太阳能电站。

（译注：这里举一个我老家宜昌的栗子。宜昌号称水电之都，却大力发展新能源，一方面在一些辖县开始建设风力发电站，60米长的风车桨叶处处可见；一方面在全市范围推广光伏发电，我家都装了20块光伏板共5kw，还有去年新建的甘肃-湖南特高压输电线路也经过宜昌）

Not far from Jinko’s factory, another arm of the company operates just such an array. Inside rows of long, low buildings, a new season’s crop of mushrooms are about to be planted. They don’t need sunlight, so the greenhouse roofs have been given over to solar panels. Nearly 19,000 of them, mounted in rows overhead, generate electricity that is fed into the grid.

晶科工厂不远的地方，公司还运营着一片巨大的阵列，一排排又长又矮的建筑中即将种植新一季的蘑菇。蘑菇不需要沐浴阳光，因此大棚的顶上空间成了光伏板的天下。近19000块光伏板，成排安装在大棚顶上，产生的电力不断地输入电网中。


At first, China’s effort “was only about getting the gigawatts up,” says Jukka-Pekka Mäkinen, CEO of The Switch, a Finland-based company manufacturing wind-power components in China. “Now it’s keeping up the gigawatts, but doing it much smarter, and focusing in areas where the consumption is.”

最初，中国（在可再生能源方面）的投入“只是为了达成发电规模。”斯维奇公司CEO Jukka-Pekka Mäkinen说，斯维奇公司是一家芬兰公司，现在中国制造风力发电的零部件。“现在发电规模已经达成了，然而是用了一种更加聪明合理的方式，更加注重在哪里消费，就在哪里生产。”

Despite such efforts, China is also still building coal-fired power plants, in part because of an incentive structure that encourages provincial officials to green-light unnecessary construction, even as the central government seeks to push cleaner options. But officials have also begun cancelling some that are already in the planning pipeline, aware that China already has more coal-fired power generation than it needs.

虽然这些成就引人注目，但中国仍然在同时建造使用煤炭的火电站，部分是因为（GDP导向的）激励结构使得地方官员为不必要的建设大开绿灯，即使中央正在大力倡导清洁能源。不过地方官们也在逐步削减一些已经进入规划的火电站，他们也认识到中国的煤炭火电站早已供过于求了。

A Manufacturing Monster

制造巨头

It’s not just pollution that’s driving the determined focus on renewable power. Leaders have made clear that they view clean energy as a powerful engine for job creation.

污染并不是驱使中国聚焦可再生能源的唯一因素。领导人们把清洁能源看做创造大量工作岗位的强力引擎。

“It’s about setting up for manufacturing dominance,” Liu says. “China sees green energy as an opportunity where it can become a manufacturing monster the way it has in clothes and toys.”

“这是为了在制造业中独领风骚，”刘安东说，“中国将绿色能源看做千载良机，中国可以乘着这股东风成为制造业的龙头，就像中国此前在服装和玩具产业中所做的一样。”

Whatever the motivation, the consequences of China’s clean energy buildup are already clear. Wealthier nations that once used China as an excuse for their own inaction are now watching it zoom past them to become a global climate leader.

不论动因是什么，中国大力发展清洁能源的效果已经显现。发达国家曾经拿中国当挡箭牌，为自己的不作为找借口，现在却只能看着中国在新能源领域一骑绝尘，成为对抗气候变化的全球领袖。

“Everybody was saying ‘China didn’t sign the Kyoto agreement,’” the 1997 climate deal, Mäkinen recalls. “So what? They did more than everybody else put together.”

“曾经大家都在说，中国没有签署《京都议定书》。”Mäkinen忆起了1997年的气候协定，“那又如何？中国做的比其他所有人加起来都要多。”