读The Economist(4) by MVT

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第4篇分析2009.04.05
Renewable energy
Greenstanding
Apr 2nd 2009 From The Economist print edition
Gordon Brown’s New Deal will do little to advance renewable energy
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ONE of the most impressive monuments to Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal is the network of dams that stud the Tennessee River valley, built to provide work and to modernise a backward corner of America during the Great Depression(可以作为一个例子). Seventy-five years later and on the other side of the Atlantic, work is once again growing scarce and an economy is in need of modernisation, this time to secure energy supplies and slash the release of planet-heating greenhouse gases. The British government has been playing up the parallels, with much ministerial talk of a “Green New Deal”. In March Gordon Brown promised the creation of a “low-carbon economy” for Britain that would provide jobs and clean up industry. Lord Mandelson, his business secretary, talked of a new industrial revolution and said that there was “no high-carbon future”.(以历史事例为引子，引入low-carbon economy政策)

It is a seductive vision. If Keynesian stimulus is to be the order of the day, greenery seems a good sector in which to apply it. There are benefits besides decarbonisation. Much of the contribution would come from changing the way electricity is generated, and many of Britain’s old power plants need replacing anyway. A switch to renewable power would cut dependence on oil and natural gas as national production of both dwindles. Windy, storm-lashed Britain is a good place to harness the weather; boosters talk excitedly of a splurge on renewable electricity and the possibility of capturing the market for offshore wind turbines(风轮机) or wave-power machines, creating tens of thousands of jobs. On April 1st Statkraft, a state-owned Norwegian firm, said it was investing GBP 500m ($715m) in a Scottish wind-farm project. (本段说低碳政策的潜力:降低对油气的依赖、地势优势、强烈支持、经济效益)

Not everyone is convinced. Green rhetoric in Britain has traditionally soared far above reality. Greenhouse-gas emissions are more or less unchanged since Labour came to power in 1997 (a better record than many countries, but hardly the promised transformation). Less than 5% of British electricity came from renewable sources in 2006, compared with 26% in Denmark and 48% in Sweden. Ambitious goals to derive 30-35% of electricity from renewable sources by 2020 are widely considered impossible. A related pledge that 15% of total energy consumption (of which electricity accounts for roughly a third) will be renewable by that date looks even less plausible. (本段做出让步，认为低碳新政不太可行:英国排放量不变、发达国家的可再生能源比重小、目标不可信)

Mr Brown’s green New Deal looks similarly flimsy. On March 31st HSBC(汇丰银行), a big bank, published a report ranking countries by how green their economic-stimulus packages were. The bank reckons that Britain is allocating just 7% of its fiscal stimulus to greenery, compared with 12% in America, 34% in China and a whopping 81% in South Korea (see chart). A separate report prepared for Greenpeace, a pressure group, by consultants at the New Economics Foundation (NEF) considers only genuinely new funding and arrives at a figure of just 0.6%, or GBP 120m. (对Brown的新政提出怀疑:图表显示财政刺激比例低、NEF的报告也显示拨款低)

Private-sector caution reflects this official inaction. Lower oil prices, sagging demand for energy and hard-to-get credit have caused many firms to cut back on renewables worldwide. But there are particular problems in Britain, not least the falling pound (most of the wind turbines installed there, for example, are built in continental Europe). (继续质疑绿色新政的作用:私企忧虑、油价低、能源需求下降、信贷难,英镑贬值的问题)

Energy companies such as Centrica and EDF, a French firm, are re-evaluating their British renewables projects. Lord Browne, a former boss of the big British oil firm BP, doubts that Britain’s laissez-faire energy policy is up to the job of decarbonising the economy, and wants state-owned banks directed to finance green-energy projects. (BP has opted out of the British renewables market because it expects low returns.) And last year Royal Dutch Shell pulled out of a GBP 3 billion wind-farm in the Thames estuary.(本段继续不看好:具体公司的反应和举措)

Convinced that these are short-term problems, fans of renewables want government cash to see projects through the tough times. But there are longer-term reasons for Britain’s comparative sluggishness. Its subsidy regime, under which green power stations generate tradable certificates, is unwieldy compared with traditional cash handouts in other countries. In the past, all technologies were subsidised equally, so most investment went into onshore wind, the cheapest source of renewable energy. But windy spots tend to be beautiful spots, and local opposition bogged down projects. There have been reforms: planning changes have made local objections easier to ignore, and the subsidy scheme was tweaked on April 1st to give extra cash to more expensive technologies, such as offshore wind turbines. An independent Climate Change Committee is supposed to advise on and police legally binding emissions-reduction targets, but it is new and its powers untested. (进一步提出新政的长期问题:补助政体的不适用、地方居民的反对)

One fear shared by many enthusiasts of renewables, says Andrew Simms, policy director of the NEF, is that the government is simply losing interest in them. It has moved speedily to revive the nuclear-power industry, by contrast. From a position of cordial dislike in 2003, the government announced itself in favour of new nuclear plants in principle as early as 2006.(新政热衷者顾虑:政府对新能源没兴趣，反而会促进政府复苏核能)

More recently ministers have been positively prescriptive, suggesting how many plants might be built and where. A takeover of British Energy, which runs most existing nuclear plants, by EDF, keen to build more, took place last year. A new nuclear laboratory has been founded, schemes to train workers set up and the vexed issue of waste disposal re-examined. (核工厂将进一步扩大)

Nuclear-power stations take many years to build, so new ones will not help Britain meet its 2020 targets for curbing emissions. But the technology is well understood. Politicians may have calculated that a few nuclear-power stations will be easier to sell the public than thousands of wind turbines. And energy does not have to be renewable to be low-carbon.(尽管核电站建立时间长，但是政府认为核电站比涡轮机好卖。并不一定要借助可再生能源来达到低碳。)