Demand For Solar Explodes Everywhere In Europe Except The UK
-Demand for solar is exploding in Europe as the war in Ukraine makes cheap methane from Russia more and more costly

除了英国，欧洲各地对太阳能的需求激增
——由于乌克兰战争使得来自俄罗斯的廉价天然气越来越昂贵，欧洲对太阳能的需求正呈爆炸式增长


(A new study aims to find new pathways for feeding more solar power into the German railroad system.)

（一项新的研究旨在寻找向德国铁路系统提供更多太阳能的新途径。）
新闻：

Wars have consequences. Russia’s unprovoked aggression against Ukraine has destroyed the smug notion that knitting the world into one giant marketplace would eliminate armed conflicts between nations. Now the chickens have come home to roost and left much of the world vulnerable to the whims and fantasies of dictators. But there is a bright side, although it will come at considerable cost. Russia has severely limited the flow of cheap methane gas to its European customer, which has caused the price of electricity to skyrocket. That, in turn, has made the business case for solar energy so compelling that demand is exploding all across Europe.

战争有后果。俄罗斯对乌克兰的侵略摧毁了一种自鸣得意的想法，即“把世界编织成一个巨大的市场就能消除国家之间的武装冲突”。现在，已经自食其果了，世界上很多地方都很容易受到独裁国家的奇思妙想和幻想的影响。但也有好的一面，尽管这将付出相当大的代价。俄罗斯严重限制向欧洲客户输送廉价的天然气，这导致电力价格飙升。这反过来又使太阳能的商业案例如此引人注目，以至于整个欧洲的需求呈爆炸式增长。
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Germany Embraces Wind & Solar

德国拥抱风能和太阳能

In April, Germany instituted new policies designed to accelerate the construction of new wind and solar installations. They will make more land available renewable energy production, and speed up permitting procedures in a push to make Germany’s electricity supply almost completely free of carbon emissions by 2035. Kerstin Andreae, the head of BDEW, the German energy industry association, said, “It must be clear to all ministries involved and all levels — be it federal or state — that the expansion of renewable energies is the order of the day, not only for climate protection but also to become less dependent on fossil energy imports.”

今年4月，德国制定了旨在加快建设新的风能和太阳能装置的新政策。他们将为可再生能源生产提供更多的土地，并加快审批程序，以推动德国电力供应到2035年几乎完全零碳排放。德国能源工业协会BDEW的负责人克斯廷·安德烈埃说：“所有相关部门和各级部门——无论是联邦还是州——都必须清楚，扩大可再生能源是当前的当务之急，这不仅是为了保护气候，也是为了减少对化石能源进口的依赖。”
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The new impetus for more renewable energy from wind and solar is no longer frxd in terms of taking action to address the challenges of a warming planet. Instead, it is cast as a way to increase energy security, something that is in the national interest of all countries. Putin’s insanity has taken the spotlight off the fight between progressives and reactionaries over whether humanity should stop burning fossil fuels and put it on protecting the economic interests of all countries — something most people can agree is a worthwhile goal.

从采取行动应对全球变暖的挑战的角度来看，开发更多风能和太阳能等可再生能源的新动力已不再是计划框架。相反，它被视为一种提高能源安全的方式，这符合所有国家的国家利益。普京的疯狂让进步派和反动派之间的斗争失去了焦点——人类是否应该停止燃烧化石燃料，而把注意力放在保护所有国家的经济利益上——大多数人都认为这是一个有价值的目标。

The issue now is not carbon dioxide, but the instability of energy prices, especially methane. Renewable energy prices do not explode and then crash with distressing regularity. Stable energy prices allow industries to make appropriate plans for the future. Wild swings in energy prices create chaos, as happened in Texas in the winter of 2021. Any rational person would chose stability over chaos, given a choice.

现在的问题不是二氧化碳，而是能源价格的不稳定，尤其是天然气。可再生能源的价格不会爆发，然后以令人沮丧的规律性暴跌。稳定的能源价格使工业能够对未来制定适当的计划。能源价格的剧烈波动造成了混乱，就像2021年冬天德克萨斯州发生的那样。如果可以选择，任何理性的人都会选择稳定而不是混乱。

David Wedepohl, managing director of the German Solar Association, told CNN Business this week, “[Demand for solar] has only gotten stronger with the war against Ukraine, which is happening on our doorstep. This is something that’s very much on people’s minds.”

德国太阳能协会常务董事大卫·魏德波尔本周告诉CNN商业频道，“（对太阳能的需求）只会随着对乌克兰的战争变得更强，而这场战争就发生在我们家门口。这是人们非常关心的事情。”

Schneider Electric, one of Europe’s largest industrial companies, says demand for its solar-powered heating systems in Germany have “almost doubled” so far this year compared to the same period in 2021. The company’s sustainability arm, which advises businesses on clean energy procurement, has also reached “an all-time peak” in consultancy requests, according to Konstantin Elstermann, the firm’s vice president of home and distribution.

欧洲最大的工业企业之一施耐德电气表示，今年迄今为止，德国对其太阳能供暖系统的需求比2021年同期“几乎翻了一番”。该公司负责家庭和配送的副总裁康斯坦丁·埃尔斯特曼表示，为企业提供清洁能源采购建议的可持续发展部门也达到了咨询请求的“空前高峰”。
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Although shortages of materials and supplies are a challenge, so is finding qualified workers to install new solar systems, especially for homeowners. “Some electricians are booked up three to six months in advance,” Elstermann says. “This bottleneck almost surpasses the current shortage of raw materials and production capacity. We know that the supply problems due to the pandemic are temporary, but the shortage of skilled workers remains.” As a result, retired electricians are returning to the workforce and roofing contractors are rushing to teach more people how to install solar panels.

尽管材料和供应短缺是一个挑战，但找到合格的工人安装新的太阳能系统也是一个挑战，尤其是对房主而言。埃尔斯特曼说：“一些电工提前三到六个月就被订满了。这一瓶颈几乎超过了目前原材料和产能的短缺。我们知道，疫情造成的供应问题是暂时的，但熟练工人的短缺仍然存在。”因此，退休的电工重新回到工作岗位，而屋顶承包商则急于教更多的人如何安装太阳能电池板。

Jim Gordon, the CEO of Smartflower, told CNN Business, “Our business is booming because there’s a perfect storm of elements converging that are really lifting solar energy. People are concerned about energy security An autocratic dictator can turn the valve on a gas pipeline and shut off energy, but nobody can control the sun.”

Smartflower的首席执行官吉姆·戈登在接受CNN商业频道采访时表示：“我们的业务正在蓬勃发展，因为有一场完美的风暴汇聚在一起，真正提升了太阳能。一个独裁国家可以打开天然气管道的阀门，关闭能源，但没有人能控制太阳。”

The biggest concern right now is keeping people from freezing this winter. Many people in Europe are dependent on that cheap methane from Russia to keep their home warm, but the spike in the cost of methane will put a substantial strain on many household budgets — and that assumes there is any of the gas available at any price.

现在最大的问题是让人们在这个冬天不被冻死。许多欧洲人依赖来自俄罗斯的廉价天然气来取暖，但天然气价格的飙升将给许多家庭的预算带来了巨大压力——这还是假设有任何价格的天然气可供使用的话。

For now, Germany has resorted to firing up its coal power plants to reduce its gas consumption, and ensure the country keeps the lights on, but chancellor Olaf Scholz has made it clear the government isn’t happy about it. “It is bitter that we now have to temporarily use some power plants that we had already shut down because of Russia’s brutal attack on Ukraine. But it’s only for a little while,” he said last month.

目前，德国已经开始使用燃煤发电厂来减少天然气消耗，并确保国家的电力供应，但总理奥拉夫·肖尔茨明确表示，政府对此并不高兴。“我们现在不得不暂时使用一些因俄罗斯对乌克兰的残酷攻击而关闭的发电厂，这让人感到痛苦。但这只是一段时间，”他上个月说。

War On Solar In The UK

英国的太阳能战争

Across the Channel, there is a political battle brewing over who should replace Boris Johnson. As so often happens in such campaigns, reason and rationality have been tossed aside as the two leading candidates battle to see who can make the most outrageous claims about the “threat” of solar power.

在英吉利海峡对岸，一场关于谁应该取代鲍里斯·约翰逊的政治斗争正在酝酿之中。正如此类竞选活动中经常发生的那样，两位领先的候选人在争夺谁能对太阳能的“威胁”做出最离谱的断言时，理性和客观被抛到了一边。

Carbon Brief reports that ground-mounted solar panels currently cover just 0.1% of all land in the UK. The government’s plans to significantly scale up solar to meet its carbon reduction goals would bring that up to just 0.3% of the UK land area. Golf courses in the country take up twice as much land. According to Corine Land Cover data, agricultural land covers 56% of the UK. Around 70,000 km2 is pasture used for grazing cows and sheep and around 67,000 km2 is for growing cereals and legumes.

Carbon Brief报告称，地面安装的太阳能电池板目前只覆盖了英国所有土地的0.1%。政府计划大幅扩大太阳能发电以实现其碳减排目标，这将使其仅占英国土地面积的0.3%。而这个国家的高尔夫球场占用了两倍的土地。根据Corine Land Cover的数据，农业用地覆盖了英国56%的土地。约7万平方公里的牧场用于放牧牛羊，约6.7万平方公里的牧场用于种植谷物和豆类。

Liz Truss, who appears to be the leading candidate to replace Johnson, told supporters earlier this month, “Our fields should be filled [with] our fantastic produce. [They] shouldn’t be full of solar panels, and I will change the rules. I will change the rules to make sure we’re using our high value agricultural land for farming.”

利兹·特拉斯似乎是替代约翰逊的主要候选人，她在本月早些时候告诉支持者，“我们的田地应该充满我们神奇的农产品。他们不应该到处都是太阳能电池板，我会改变规则。我将改变规则，以确保我们将高价值的农业土地用于耕作。”

Not to be outdone, her chief rival to lead the Conservative Party, Rishi Sunak, wrote an article for the Daily Telegraph in which he said, “On my watch, we will not lose swathes of our best farmland to solar farms. Instead, we should be making sure that solar panels are installed on commercial buildings, on sheds and on properties.”

她领导的保守党的主要竞争对手里希·苏纳克也不甘示弱，他在《每日电讯报》上写了一篇文章，其中写道：“在我的任期内，我们不会把我们最好的农田让给太阳能农场。相反，我们应该确保太阳能电池板安装在商业建筑、工棚和房产上。”

This overheated campaign rhetoric has earned some pushback in the British press. Carbon Brief says Sean O’Neill, a senior reporter for The Times, wrote that the pair are “displaying staggering ignorance” and “pandering to the whingeing nimbys in their tiny electorate.” In the Daily Telegraph, the paper’s chief city commentator Ben Marlow wrote, “Britain’s culture wars have reached such epically absurd proportions that even the sun is now the enemy.”

这种过于激烈的竞选言论在英国媒体中遭到了一些抵制。Carbon Brief说，《泰晤士报》的高级记者肖恩·奥尼尔写道，这两人“显示出了惊人的无知”，“迎合了他们的小选民中那些牢骚不断的邻避者”。《每日电讯报》的首席城市评论员本·马洛写道：“英国的文化战争已经达到了如此荒谬的程度，现在连太阳都成了敌人。”

This line of attack on solar seems to be a theme among Conservative politicians in the UK, even though the latest data shows 73% of conservative voters favor the expansion of solar power.

尽管最新数据显示73%的保守党选民支持扩大太阳能发电，但对太阳能发电的攻击似乎成了英国保守党政客的一个主题。

According to Solar Energy UK, approximately 6 acres of land is required for every megawatt (MW) of power produced. Currently the UK has about 14 MW of installed land-based solar capacity, which covers an about 230 square km today. That is just under 0.1% of all land in the UK.

根据Solar Energy UK公司的数据，每生产一兆瓦的电力大约需要6英亩的土地。目前，英国已经安装了约14兆瓦的陆基太阳能发电能力，覆盖面积约230平方公里。这只占英国土地总量的0.1%不到。

The government proposes to install an additional 38 MW of ground-based solar by 2035. According to The Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, future solar power will need between 2 and 4 acres of land to produce 1 MW of power. Assuming an average of 3 acres per MW, the amount of land needed to achieve the government target would cover about 700 km2 by 2035 — just 0.3% of the UK’s land surface. Golf courses cover more land than that.

政府计划到2035年再安装38兆瓦的地面太阳能电池板。根据商业、能源和工业战略部门，未来的太阳能发电将需要2到4英亩的土地来生产1兆瓦的电力。假设平均每兆瓦3英亩，到2035年，实现政府目标所需的土地数量将覆盖约700平方公里——仅为英国陆地表面的0.3%。高尔夫球场的占地面积比这还大。

Farmers Know Best

农民最了解

All of this hysteria about protecting valuable farmland may play well with some voters, but it’s not in line with the thinking of many actual farmers. Carbon Brief spoke to Tom Martin, who has proposed a solar installation on his mixed farm in Cambridgeshire. The project would see around 65,000 solar panels sited on approximately 100 acres across three fields. Martin describes the idea of adding solar panels to grassland while still grazing sheep as a win-win situation. “It’s not ‘produce 10 units of energy’ or ‘produce 10 units of food’. It could be six units of both. And then, all of a sudden, your two halves are greater than the whole.”

所有这些关于保护宝贵农田的歇斯底里可能会得到一些选民的支持，但这并不符合许多实际农民的想法。Carbon Brief采访了汤姆·马丁，他提议在剑桥郡的混合农场安装太阳能装置。该项目将在三处占地约100英亩的土地上安装约65000块太阳能电池板。马丁说，在草原上安装太阳能电池板的想法是双赢的。“它不是‘生产10单位能量’、生产10单位食物’二选一，也可以是各自生产6个单位。然后，突然之间，你的两个部分之和比单一整体更大。”

The sextion of which fields to use for solar is down to a mix of factors, explains Martin. This includes, for example, the best way to connect the system to the grid, but also choosing the fields that generally produce lower yields. In other words, there’s more to this than political rhetoric.

马丁解释说，选择在哪些领域使用太阳能取决于多种因素。这包括，比如，将系统连接到电网的最佳方式，但也包括选择产量通常较低的领域。换句话说，这不仅仅是政治修辞。

He says his farm is always seeing a “fluid” rotation between grassland and arable use, adding that “in the last 10 years, we have changed 200 acres from grass into arable.” So even with moving 100 acres back to grass for the solar panels, the farm will still be producing more cereals than it did a decade ago.

他说，他的农场总是看到草地和耕地之间的“流动”循环，并补充说，“在过去的10年里，我们已经把200英亩的草地变成了耕地。”因此，即使将100英亩土地移回草地用于安装太阳能电池板，农场仍将比十年前生产更多的谷物。

A spokesperson from the National Farmers unx (NFU), which represents tens of thousands of farmers in England and Wales, tells Carbon Brief that their “preference” is that solar farms are built on lower quality agricultural land, but added, “Renewable energy production is a core part of the NFU’s net-zero plan and solar projects often offer a good diversification option for farmers.”

代表英格兰和威尔士成千上万农民的全国农民联盟的一位发言人告诉Carbon Brief，他们的“偏好”是太阳能农场建在低质量的农业土地上，但补充说，“可再生能源生产是全国农民联盟净零计划的核心部分，太阳能项目通常为农民提供了一个很好的多样化选择。”

Kevin McCann, policy manager at trade body Solar Energy UK, tells Carbon Brief, “Solar is also helping to keep UK farmers in business, by providing them with a stable revenue stream. More solar also means less dependence on gas, which is the reason why the UK is in a cost of living crisis.”

凯文·麦卡恩是英国太阳能贸易机构的政策经理，他告诉Carbon Brief说：“太阳能通过为英国农民提供稳定的收入来源，也帮助他们保持生意。更多的太阳能也意味着对天然气的依赖减少，而后者就是英国陷入生活成本危机的原因。”

The Takeaway

要点

Dumb political rhetoric may win elections in the UK (and lots of other places, too), but nothing moves markets like interdicting a country’s supply of energy. The ripple effects of the OPEC oil embargoes lasted for decades. The one thing Vladimir Putin may have accomplished, in addition to slaughtering untold numbers of innocent people, is a renewed appreciation for energy independence.

愚蠢的政治言论可能会在英国（以及许多其他地方）赢得选举，但没有什么比切断一个国家的能源供应更能改变市场了。欧佩克石油禁运的连锁反应持续了几十年。除了XX了数不清的无辜民众之外，弗拉基米尔·普京或许还完成了一件事，那就是让人们重新认识到了能源独立的重要性。

More and more, people and their political leaders see renewable energy as the best and less costly path to energy security. And why not? Wind and solar energy already cost less than electricity from thermal generation sources. The current constraints on methane have just exacerbated the difference.

人们和他们的政治领导人越来越多地将可再生能源视为实现能源安全的最佳和成本较低的途径。为什么不呢？风能和太阳能的成本已经低于火力发电。目前对天然气的限制加剧了这种差异。

Europe, and yes, even the UK, will be well on the way to energy independence within a few years and to a fully carbon neutral electrical grid a few years from now. Putin has probably accelerated the transition to renewable energy by a decade. In the US, the latest Inflation Reduction Act was likely made possible by the need to override petty disagreements in order to fashion an appropriate response to energy insecurity.

欧洲，是的，甚至是英国，都将在几年内走上能源独立的道路，并在几年内实现完全碳中和的电网。普京可能已经将向可再生能源的过渡速度加快了10年。在美国，最新的《降低通胀法案》之所以得以通过，可能是因为需要推翻微小的分歧，以对能源不安全做出适当的回应。

In the end, since Russia has made the sale of fossil fuels the basis of its economy, Putin has actually slit his own throat.

最后，由于俄罗斯已经把化石燃料销售作为其经济的基础，他们实际上是在自杀。

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