Looking Under Germany’s “Green” Hood
摘下德国的“小绿帽”看看
Germany has tripled its renewable power production over the past decade. But how green is its energiewende, really?
过去十年间，德国可再生能源生产增加了三倍。但是，德国的“能源转型”（energiewende）到底有多绿色？
There’s no denying that the energiewende — Germany’s much ballyhooed and supposedly green energy transition—has accomplished a great deal in recent years, but whether the country (and the environment) is better off for it requires a closer examination. Let’s start with the good news and focus on the extraordinary growth of renewable energy in Germany over the past decade.
毫无疑问，“能源转型”——德国大肆宣扬的所谓绿色环保的能源转变计划——在过去数年间达成了很多目标，但该国（及其环境）是否因此而变好了，则需要更细致的考察。我们首先来看看好消息，关注一下过去十年间德国可再生能源的非凡增长。
According to data compiled in a recent briefing by the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), “[e]lectricity generated from renewable sources has tripled in Germany over the past 10 years.” Most of that added capacity has come from new wind and solar farms (a direct result of energiewende policies) and Berlin hopes to rely on renewables for more than four-fifths of its power by 2050—a remarkably ambitious goal.
根据美国能源情报署（EIA）最近发布的一份简报上搜集的数据，“过去十年间，德国的可再生能源发电量增加了三倍。”这种新增发电能力大部分来自于新建的风力发电厂和太阳能发电厂（这正是“能源转换”政策的直接成果），而且柏林还期望到2050年时其电力需求的五分之四能够依赖可再生能源——一个非常野心勃勃的目标。
But as much of a reach as that mid-century target appears to be, what Germany has already accomplished is nothing short of striking. Most of the time when we hear about the growth of renewables, the numbers only look impressive when you discuss them in terms of growth, and tend to pale in significance when you place them in the wider context of an energy mix.
虽然这个截至本世纪中叶的目标看起来很宏伟，但德国目前所取得的成绩也是十分夺目的。多数情况下，当我们听到可再生能源的发展时，只有在当你讨论增长时数字才令人印象深刻。如果把这些数字放到能源结构这一更大的背景中去，它的重要性往往就会相形见绌。
For example, there have been plenty of headlines recently about the stellar year renewables had here in the United States in 2015, with wind and solar respectively accounting for 41 and 26 percent of new electricity generation capacity. But looking under the hood, we find that after all of that growth, renewable energy sources still account for just 7 percent of our nation’s overall power generation (wind is at 4.7 percent while solar produces a measly 0.6 percent), a pittance next to real green workhorses like nuclear power (20 percent) or natural gas (33 percent).
比方说，我们已经在报纸上看过很多头条文章，谈论2015年是美国可再生能源的闪亮年份——风能和太阳能分别占到新增发电能力的41%和26%。但是揭开帽子一看，我们就会发现，在经历所有这些增长之后，可再生能源在全国发电总量中仍然只占有7%（风力发电占4.7%，而太阳能发电更是只有可怜的0.6%），与真正的绿色老马如核电（20%）或天然气（33%）相比差距甚远。
However in Germany, renewables contributed to a whopping 31 percent of electricity generation in 2015, and on particularly windy or sunny days that number spiked much higher. Environmentalists around the world are jumping up and down, pointing at this progress as evidence that renewables’ day has finally come. Still, most other countries aren’t exactly chomping at the bit to replicate energiewende strategies. Why is that?
但是在德国，可再生能源为2015年发电量贡献了31%，占比非常之高。而且，赶上风特别大或光照特别充足的日子，这个数字还能爬得更高。全球的环保主义者都手舞足蹈，认为这种变化正是可再生能源全盛之日终于来临的证据。然而，大部分其他国家却并没有迫不及待地想要复制“能源转型”这一战略。原因何在？
The growth of renewables didn’t occur because of market forces—wind and solar aren’t out-competing fossil fuels on price. Rather, Berlin had to subsidize their growth through the use of feed-in tariffs, which essentially guaranteed wind and solar producers privileged grid access and long-term, above-market rates for their power. The costs of these feed-in tariffs have been passed along to German consumers in the form of a green surcharge on their electricity bills.
因为，可再生能源的增加并不是市场作用的结果，风力和太阳能并不是通过价格优势而战胜化石燃料的。为了增加可再生能源发电量，柏林必须通过强制价回购政策（feed-in tariffs）对其进行补贴。这种补贴政策实质上为风力和太阳能发电厂提供了入网特权，并且让他们能在很长时间内以高于市场价的价格售电。这类强制价回购政策的成本被转嫁到德国消费者身上，他们的电费账单上因此增加了一种绿色附加费。
You don’t have to be a beltway insider to see how politically poisonous a policy predicated on higher power bills might be to leaders looking at their own energy mixes elsewhere in the world. At a time when oil and gas markets are fairly flooded with supplies and prices are correspondingly low, it’s an even harder sell for policymakers: “never mind that cheap (and relatively clean burning) natural gas. Here, have some expensive wind power.”
对于世界其他地方的政治领导人来说，面对他们国家的能源结构，这种只能由更高的电费账单才能维持的政策在政治上将会多么有害，你无需是个官场老手也能想明白。特别是，现在石油和天然气市场供给泛滥，因此价格相应很低，要说服政策制定者接受上述政策就更是难上加难了：“别理那些便宜（且相对而言更能清洁燃烧的）天然气了。来，用用更贵的风力发电。”
These aren’t nominal price hikes, either. Feed-in tariffs double the average German household’s power bill, and according to the EIA, they’re spiraling up:
而且，这并非名义物价上涨。强制价回购政策使得德国家庭的平均电费上涨了一倍。根据EIA，目前它还在螺旋上升：
[O]ne surcharge for renewable electricity increased from 8.8% of the residential electricity price in 2010 to 17% in 2013…In 2014, the average sales-weighted retail price for residential consumption in Germany was about 35 cents/kWh, while the average residential retail price in the United States was about 13 cents/kWh. Along with Denmark, Germany has among the highest residential electricity prices in Europe.
“民用电价格中因可再生能源而产生的一项附加费从2010年的8.8%上涨到2013年的17%……2014年，德国的民用电零售价格依销售额加权平均后为35美分/千瓦时，而美国的民用电平均零售价约为13美分/千瓦时。在民用电价格方面，德国与丹麦同居全欧之首。”
Cheap energy is foundational for economic growth, and expensive electricity can be seen as a regressive tax on poorer households. Upper class homes might not notice their power bill doubling as a result of green surcharges because it makes up a much smaller slice of their monthly budget, but for working class families the cumulative effect of paying off that eco-premium can be devastating.
廉价能源对于经济增长具有基础性作用，而昂贵的电费则可以被看作是加于贫困家庭身上的一种累退税。电费账单因为绿色附加费而上涨一倍，这一点上层阶级家庭可能不会注意到，因为电费在他们的每月开支中只占到很小一部分，但对于工人阶级家庭而言，持续支付这种生态附加费的累积后果则非常大。
And that’s just the beginning of the energiewende‘s problems. Wind and solar power are by their very nature intermittent energy sources, meaning they can only supply the grid when the wind is blowing or the sun is shining. That’s a big problem for grid operators, because above all else, society needs its electricity supply to be dependable.
而这在“能源转型”所面临的诸多问题中还只是个开头。就其性质而言，风能和太阳能都只是间歇性的能量来源，只有刮风或出太阳的时候才能给电网供电。这对电网运营企业来说是个大麻烦，因为社会需要其电力供应稳定可靠，这一点至关重要。
Moreover, wind and solar farms tend to be much smaller and more numerous than coal- or gas-fired power plants or nuclear reactors (more on those later). The inconsistency of these renewables and their more distributed siting pattern both pose big challenges to grids, and Germany hasn’t updated its electricity transmission systems at the same pace as it has incentivized the development of green energy.
另外，相较于燃煤或燃气发电厂或者核电站（下文再详述），风力发电厂和太阳能发电厂一般都更小、更多。这些可再生能源发电厂的不稳定，以及更为分散的选址，都对输电网带来了极大的挑战，而德国虽然一直在刺激绿色能源发展，但并没有同步更新其电力输送网络。
As you might expect, that’s proving problematic. As seems to be the case with any new energy project, NIMBY-ism reared its head. Local German communities vigorously protested the construction of high-voltage transmission lines that would have brought power from offshore wind farms in the Baltic and North Seas southward.
不难预料，这必定是个麻烦事。跟几乎任何新建能源项目都会遭遇的一样，邻避一族首先出来阻扰。为了将电力从位于波罗的海和北海海边的离岸风力发电厂往南输送，需要修建高压输电线，而这在德国遭到了各地方社区的猛烈抵制。
Grid problems extend beyond the country’s borders to Germany’s neighbors, too. The Czech Republic and Poland have had to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to protect their own grids from surging German power on those especially sunny and breezy days. As the Czech Permanent Representative to the EU, Martin Povejšil, put it last summer, “if there is a strong blow of the wind in the North, we get it, we have the blackout.”
电网问题还越过国界，影响到了德国的邻国。为了保护各自的电网抵御大风或烈日天气里来自德国的电压突增问题，捷克共和国和波兰都已经花费了数亿美元。捷克驻欧盟的常任代表Martin Povejšil去年夏天就说：“如果北欧刮大风，我们有体会，我们会停电。”
As Germany’s energiewende leads it down that road to 80+ percent renewables, these intermittency issues will become even more extreme. To get an idea of just how unreliable the German power supply has become, intraday energy trading in the German power market is now too volatile for humans to keep up, so traders have to rely on algorithms to do their jobs for them.
随着德国的“能源转型”政策朝着可再生能源发电占比80%以上的目标一路进发，上述因发电间歇而导致的问题将会愈演愈烈。为了了解一下德国的电力供应已经变得多不稳定，我们可以看个例子。德国电力市场的当日能源交易波动之大，单凭人脑已经无法跟踪，所以交易员们只能依靠计算机算法来做事。
But wait! There’s more. In some bizarre twist of tortured green logic, Germany’s “clean” energy transition also included the shuttering of the country’s only source of baseload (read: consistent) source of zero-emissions power: its fleet of nuclear reactors. This move was hastened by the 2011 Fukushima disaster, despite the fact that Germany, unlike Japan, straddles no tectonic boundary and therefore faces none of the same environmental challenges that the island nation does.
等一下！这还没完。在扭曲的绿色逻辑的古怪推理之下，德国的“清洁”能源转型还包括关闭该国唯一的零排放基载（即稳定可靠）电力来源——核反应堆机组。因2011年福岛事件爆发，这一举动得以加速，尽管德国跟日本不同，并不位于任何地质构造边界之上，因此也并不面临日本这一岛国所面临的任何类似环境挑战。
Whether you ascribe Berlin’s decision to snub nuclear power to fear or base political pandering to clueless environmentalists that have long held an anti-nuclear bias, the end result has been a loss of clean power, and most of that lost capacity has been replaced by the dirtiest fossil fuel around, coal—and not just any coal, but one of the dirtiest varieties of the sooty rock called lignite.
不管你认为柏林作出停止核能发电的决策是出于恐惧还是出于对愚蠢的环保主义者（他们从来都在偏执地反对核能）的可耻政治迎合，最终结果都很明白，那就是清洁电力变少了，而损失的发电量绝大多数又是由各种化石燃料中最脏的一种来填补的，那就是煤——而且不仅仅是普通的煤，而是这类乌黑矿石中最脏的一种，叫做褐煤。
Coal accounted for a plurality of Germany’s power production last year, a whole 44 percent of it, and until researchers discover a technological fix for the intermittency of wind and solar power, there’s not a great deal renewables can do to encroach on Old King Coal’s fiefdom.
煤炭在德国去年的电力生产中占比最高，总共达到44%。而且，除非研究者找到了风力和太阳能发电间歇性问题的技术解决办法，否则可再生能源要想蚕食“煤炭老国王”的领地，恐怕将无处下手。
If Germany was really serious about working towards a clean energy mix, they’d be spending less on propping up today’s generation of renewables and more on the research and development of the next generation of wind turbines, solar panels, and energy storage options that could allow those green energy sources to compete with fossil fuels on their own merit.
如果德国确实真的想要塑造出一个清洁能源结构，他们就应该少在扶持这一代可再生能源发电上花钱，多在研究开发下一代风轮机、太阳能电池板和储能设备等方面花钱，以便这些绿色能源能够凭自身的长处和化石能源进行竞争。
If Germany was really interested in acting as an eco-friendly example for the rest of the world, it would be embracing nuclear power (and investing in the next generation of nuclear technologies) with both arms, rather than shunning it in favor of lignite coal.
如果德国确实真的有心想要为世界其他地方做一个生态友好的典范，它就应该张开手臂拥抱核能（并在下一代核技术上增加投资），而不是有意回避核能，偏向褐煤。
Berlin hoped to set an example for the world with its energiewende, and there’s no denying that it has done just that—ten years ago, most would have scoffed at the notion that Germany could grow its renewable power generation as quickly as it has. However the German example isn’t a positive one, but rather a cautionary tale to world leaders of what can happen when you let environmentalist biases guide strategic energy planning.
柏林意图将“能源转型”政策树立为全世界的典范，而且无可置辩实现了这一目的——十年前，如果有人说德国的可再生能源发电量增长速度会有实际这么快，大多数人都会嗤之以鼻。但是，德国的样本并不是正面的。对于世界各国的领导人来说，它更像是一则警示寓言，提醒他们一旦让环保主义偏见主导战略性能源规划会有什么后果。
We can applaud the motivations of the energiewende — creating a sustainable energy mix is going to be a top priority not just for Germany but for our species over the coming decades—while still criticizing the tools it has tried to use to accomplish that goal. Regrettably, for all the impressive (and costly) progress Germany has made growing its renewable energy sector, it hasn’t seriously committed itself to the pursuit of an actually sustainable energiewende, hype be damned.
我们赞赏“能源转型”政策的动机。在未来数十年内，创建一个可持续的能源结构不但将是德国，而且将是整个人类种族的头等大事。但是，我们仍然可以批评德国用以实现这一目标的工具。尽管德国的可再生能源部门取得了引人注目（且昂贵的）长足增长，但遗憾的是，德国并没有认真地致力于追求一个真正可持续的“能源转型”，该死的炒作！
翻译：沈沉（@你在何地-sxy）
校对：babyface_claire (@许你疯不许你傻)
编辑：辉格@whigzhou