双语新闻：可再生能源革命挑战行业旧秩序

2014-10-28 16:55:34来源：网络

　　Plummeting Prices

　　暴跌的价格

　　One recent day, under a brilliant California sun, saws buzzed as workers put the finishingtouches 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 onevery 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 declinemeans solar power is starting to make more economic sense, especially in parts of the UnitedStates 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 homeautomatically 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. Thecompany typically retains ownership of the panels and signs 20-year deals to sell homeownersthe 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 pastdecade, the Germans set out to lower the cost of going green by creating rapid growth in theonce-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 forfarmers, homeowners, businesses and local cooperatives willing to install solar panels, windturbines, biogas plants and other sources of renewable energy. The plan is paid for throughsurcharges on electricity bills that cost the typical German family roughly $280 a year, thoughsome 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。

　　The program has expanded the renewables market and created huge economies of scale, withworldwide sales of solar panels doubling about every 21 months over the past decade, andprices falling roughly 20 percent with each doubling. "The Germans were not really buyingpower — they were buying price decline," said Hal Harvey, who heads an energy think tank inSan Francisco.

　　德国的这一方案帮助扩大了可再生能源市场的规模，带来了巨大的规模效应——过去10年，太阳能板的全球销量每隔21个月就会翻倍，而销量每翻倍一次，价格就会降低20%左右。“德国人投入重金，买的不是电，而是价格的下降。”旧金山一家能源智库的负责人哈尔·哈维(Hal Harvey)说。

　　The ripple effects drove some American panel manufacturers out of business, promptingcomplaints about Chinese government subsidies to the manufacturers who seized much of themarket. But the decline also created an opportunity for American homeowners and forcompanies like Lennar.

　　在这种连锁反应下，美国的一些生产商被迫关门歇业，中国政府向占据了很大一部分市场份额的本国厂商发放补贴之举，引人抱怨。不过，价格的下降也为美国的屋主以及莱纳这样的公司带来了机会。

　　Wind power, too, has come down sharply in price in recent years, and it is now competitivewith the cost of new coal-burning power plants in parts of the United States.

　　近年来，风电价格也大幅下降。目前，风电在成本上可以和美国部分地区新建的燃煤电厂匹敌。

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