可再生能源革命挑战行业旧秩序

HELIGOLAND, Germany — Of all the developed nations, few have pushed harder than Germany to find a solution to global warming. And towering symbols of that drive are appearing in the middle of the North Sea.
德国黑尔戈兰岛——几乎没有哪个发达国家会像德国这般卖力地寻求全球变暖的解决之道。现在，一些高耸的大家伙作为这项努力的象征，出现在了北海中。

They are wind turbines, standing as far as 60 miles from the mainland, stretching as high as 60-story buildings and costing up to $30 million apiece. On some of these giant machines, a single blade roughly equals the wingspan of the largest airliner in the sky, the Airbus A380. By year’s end, scores of new turbines will be sending low-emission electricity to German cities hundreds of miles to the south.
它们是风力涡轮机，屹立在距内陆60英里的地方，足有60层楼那么高，每台耗资达3000万美元。这些机器都是庞然大物，有的光是上边的一个叶片，大小就和天空中最大的客机——空客A380——差不多了。今年年底前，数十台新安装的涡轮机会给向南数百英里处的德国城市供应清洁电能。

It will be another milestone in Germany’s costly attempt to remake its electricity system, an ambitious project that has already produced striking results: Germans will soon be getting 30 percent of their power from renewable energy sources. Many smaller countries are beating that, but Germany is by far the largest industrial power to reach that level in the modern era. It is more than twice the percentage in the United States.
这将是德国耗资巨大的电力系统改造工程的又一个里程碑。此项宏大的工程已经取得了惊人的成效：可再生能源对该国电力供应的贡献率很快就能达到30%。这对很多小国而言可能不在话下，但迄今为止，德国是近现代达到这一水平的工业国中最大的一个。30%的比例较美国高出一倍多。

Germany’s relentless push into renewable energy has implications far beyond its shores. By creating huge demand for wind turbines and especially for solar panels, it has helped lure big Chinese manufacturers into the market, and that combination is driving down costs faster than almost anyone thought possible just a few years ago.
德国在不断地推进可再生能源的开发利用，其影响远远超出了它的国界。通过催生出对风力涡轮机和太阳能板（尤其是后者）的巨大需求，它在将中国大型制造企业吸引到这个市场的过程中发挥了作用，由此产生的合力正让成本飞速下降——几年前根本没人料到会降得如此之快。

Electric utility executives all over the world are watching nervously as technologies they once dismissed as irrelevant begin to threaten their long-established business plans. Fights are erupting across the United States over the future rules for renewable power. Many poor countries, once intent on building coal-fired power plants to bring electricity to their people, are discussing whether they might leapfrog the fossil age and build clean grids from the outset.
全球的电力公司高管们，眼睁睁看着一度被自己视作无关紧要的技术开始威胁到自家公司长期以来的经营方略，无不如坐针毡。美国各地都爆发了有关可再生能源电力未来规则的讨论。许多曾打算通过建造燃煤发电厂来为国民供电的穷国，眼下正探讨是否可以跳过化石燃料时代，从一开始就构建清洁能源网络。

A reckoning is at hand, and nowhere is that clearer than in Germany. Even as the country sets records nearly every month for renewable power production, the changes have devastated its utility companies, whose profits from power generation have collapsed.
清算的时刻到了，而德国的情况可能比任何地方都要明了。几乎每个月，德国都会刷新可再生能源电力的生产纪录，但与此同时，这些变化让该国的公用事业公司损失惨重，来自电力生产的利润一路狂跌。

A similar pattern may well play out in other countries that are pursuing ambitious plans for renewable energy. Some American states, impatient with legislative gridlock in Washington, have set aggressive goals of their own, aiming for 20 or 30 percent renewable energy as soon as 2020.
类似的情况很可能出现在其他那些正推行宏大的可再生能源规划的国家。美国的一些州对华盛顿的立法僵局失去了耐心，已经自行设立了雄心勃勃的目标：在2020年之前就要让可再生能源对电力供应的贡献率达到20%至30%。

The word the Germans use for their plan is starting to make its way into conversations elsewhere: energiewende, the energy transition. Worldwide, Germany is being held up as a model, cited by environmental activists as proof that a transformation of the global energy system is possible.
德国人把自己的方案叫“能源转型”(energiewende)，这个词已经开始被其他国家和地区的一些人挂在嘴边。德国被全世界奉为楷模，环保人士常常以它为例来证明，全球能源系统的转型是可以实现的。

But it is becoming clear that the transformation, if plausible, will be wrenching. Some experts say the electricity business is entering a period of turmoil beyond anything in its 130-year history, a disruption potentially as great as those that have remade the airlines, the music industry and the telephone business.
但人们越来越清楚地看到，这种转型即便可行，也会是一个痛苦的过程。一些业内人士称，电力产业进入了它130年的历史上最激烈的动荡期，它正迎来一场裂变，其影响可能堪比航空、音乐以及电话产业曾经发生的那些重塑产业格局的大裂变。

Taking full advantage of the possibilities may require scrapping the old rules of electricity markets and starting over, industry observers say — perhaps with techniques like paying utilities extra to keep conventional power plants on standby for times when the wind is not blowing and the sun is not shining. The German government has acknowledged the need for new rules, though it has yet to figure out what they should be. A handful of American states are beginning a similar reconsideration of how their electric systems operate.
行业观察人士表示，要充分利用这种可能性，也许就得抛开电力市场的旧有规则，重新规划——大概还得作一些安排，比如向公用事业公司额外付费，让其保留传统发电厂备用，以应付风力和日照不足的情况。德国政府已经认识到了启用新规则的必要性，尽管它还没弄清新规则该是什么样。美国的少数几个州同样在重新思考本州电力系统的运行方式。

“It’s pretty amazing what’s happening, really,” said Gerard Reid, an Irish financier working in Berlin on German energy projects. “The Germans call it a transformation, but to me it’s a revolution.”
“正在发生的一切真的十分惊人，”在柏林做德国能源项目的爱尔兰投资人杰拉德·里德(Gerard Reid)说，“德国人称之为转型，但在我看来这是一场革命。”

The potential payoff for getting the new rules right is enormous: a far greener electricity system that does not pump as much greenhouse gas and other pollution into the atmosphere. Yet as the German experience shows, the difficulties of the transition are likely to be enormous, too, and it is still far from clear whether the system can be transformed fast enough to head off dangerous levels of global warming.
如果能正确地创建新规则，就有机会获得巨大的回报：有一个更为环保的、不再向大气中排放那么多温室气体以及其他污染物的电力系统。不过德国的经验表明，转型的困难同样是巨大的；而且目前还远远不能确定该系统的转型速度是否能快到足以防止全球变暖达到危险的程度。

“I am convinced that wind and sun will be the central sources of energy, not only in Germany but worldwide,” said Patrick Graichen, who heads a think tank in Berlin, Agora Energiewende, devoted to studying the shift. “The question is: How can we turn the energy transition into a success story?”
“我相信，风和阳光将会成为主要的能量来源，不光在德国，在全世界都是如此。”致力于能源转型研究的柏林智库阿哥拉能源转型(Agora Energiewende)的负责人帕特里克·格赖兴(Patrick Graichen)说，“问题是：我们怎样才能让这场能源转型成为成功的范例。”

Plummeting Prices
暴跌的价格

One recent day, under a brilliant California sun, saws buzzed as workers put the finishing touches on spacious new homes. They looked like many others going up in Orange County, south of Los Angeles, but with an extra feature: Lennar Corporation was putting solar panels on every house it built.
不久前的一天，在加利福尼亚州明媚的阳光下，工人们手拿嗡嗡作响的电锯，给宽敞的新房加上最后的点缀。这些新房坐落在洛杉矶以南的奥兰治县，看起来跟当地的其他房屋没有太大差别，但它们都有一个附加特性：莱纳公司(Lennar Corporation)给自己盖的每一栋房子都安装了太阳能面板。

The prices of the panels have plunged 70 percent in the past five years. That huge decline means solar power is starting to make more economic sense, especially in parts of the United States with high electricity prices.
过去五年，太阳能板的价格大跌了70%。这种暴跌意味着用太阳能供电开始变得更加经济了，尤其是在美国一部分电价较高的地区。

At about 100 Lennar subdivisions in California, buyers who move into a new home automatically get solar panels on the roof. Lennar, the nation’s second-largest homebuilder, recently decided to expand that policy to several more states, starting with Colorado. The company typically retains ownership of the panels and signs 20-year deals to sell homeowners the power from their own roofs, at a 20 percent discount from the local utility’s prices.
在加利福尼亚州约100个由莱纳公司兴建的住宅小区里，买家搬进新房时，就自动获得了屋顶的太阳能板。作为美国第二大住宅建筑商的莱纳公司，最近决定从科罗拉多州开始，在其他几个州推广这种做法。该公司通常会保留这些组件的所有权，并和房主签定为期20年的合同，让他们买下产自自家屋顶的电力，价格比当地公用事业公司的报价低20%。

“It’s so simple when we tell a customer, ‘You’re guaranteed to save money,’ ” said David J. Kaiserman, president of Lennar Ventures, the division overseeing the solar plan.
这个太阳能计划由莱纳事业部(Lennar Ventures)负责，其总裁大卫·J·凯泽曼(David J. Kaiserman)说，“当我们告诉客户‘包你省钱’时，事情就变得非常简单了。”

The shifting economics can largely be traced to China, by way of Germany. Over the past decade, the Germans set out to lower the cost of going green by creating rapid growth in the once-tiny market for renewable power.
在很大程度上，这种经济性变化是中国——在德国带动之下——发挥作用的结果。过去10年间，德国人让一度不成规模的可再生能源电力市场实现了快速增长，从而降低了走绿色之路的成本。

Germany has spent more than $140 billion on its program, dangling guaranteed returns for farmers, homeowners, businesses and local cooperatives willing to install solar panels, wind turbines, biogas plants and other sources of renewable energy. The plan is paid for through surcharges on electricity bills that cost the typical German family roughly $280 a year, though some of that has been offset as renewables have pushed down wholesale electricity prices.
德国已经在其能源转型方案上投入了1400多亿美元，并以固定收益诱惑有意安装太阳能板、风力涡轮机、沼气池等可再生能源设备的农民、屋主、企业以及当地的合作社。该方案的成本要通过征收可再生能源电价附加费来弥补，一个普通德国家庭每年大约要缴纳280美元，不过，由于可再生能源拉低了趸售电价，此项开支被抵消了一部分。