西方如何在绿色科技竞赛中落后
正文翻译
题图。
In the late 1980s, Denmark’s pioneering wind power sector celebrated a potential new customer. Engineers at Bonus Energy completed an order for 13 turbines from a company in China’s xinjiang region, which were delivered on the Trans-Siberian railway.
上世纪80年代末，丹麦风电行业迎来了一个潜在的新客户。Bonus能源公司的工程师们完成了来自中国新疆一家公司的13台风力涡轮机的订单，这些涡轮机通过西伯利亚铁路运送至中国。
The turbines were a proof of concept to help show Chinese officials that it was “doable, and if you got the technology right, it was reliable”, recalls Henrik Stiesdal, sometimes known as the “godfather” of the wind industry for his influential turbine inventions and who at the time was working for Bonus.
亨里克-斯蒂斯达尔回忆说，这批涡轮机是一次概念验证，意在向中国官员证明风电“是可行的，只要技术过关，就能稳定运行”。斯蒂斯达尔因其具有影响力的涡轮机发明而被誉为风能行业的“教父”，当时他正在Bonus公司工作。
Denmark even threw in some financial incentives: China’s xinjiang Wind Energy Corporation received funding from Danida, the country’s development aid agency, for the turbines.
丹麦甚至额外提供了一些资金支持：中国新疆风能公司从丹麦国际开发署获得了用于建造风力涡轮机的资金。
Nearly four decades later, the tables have completely turned. China has become the global powerhouse in renewable energy technologies, supplying more than 90 per cent of the world’s solar panels and dominating battery supply chains, as well as the processing of rare earth materials that are critical to the industry.
近四十年后，形势发生了彻底的转变。中国已成为全球可再生能源技术强国，供应全球90%以上的太阳能电池板，主导着电池供应链，并主导着对该行业至关重要的稀土材料的加工。
China’s enormous manufacturing capacity has lowered costs of solar power beyond the most ambitious projections of industry executives, triggering a rush to adopt it around the world. But competition from China has also helped tip swaths of US and European industry into bankruptcy.
中国庞大的制造业产能已将太阳能发电成本降至远超业内高管最乐观预期的水平，引发了全球范围内的太阳能热潮。但来自中国的竞争也导致美国和欧洲大片产业破产。
“We created the market [for solar] and made it interesting for investors,” says Eicke Weber, a solar industry veteran and former co-chairman of the European Solar Manufacturing Council. “But we forgot to make industrial policies.”
“我们创造了太阳能市场，并使其对投资者具有吸引力，”太阳能行业资深人士、欧洲太阳能制造委员会前联合主席艾克-韦伯表示，“但我们却忘记制定产业政策。”
At a time when Europe and the US are both scrambling to find ways to respond to China’s industrial competitiveness, the experience of how the green tech industry lost its early lead has become a central lesson.
在欧洲和美国都在努力寻找应对中国产业竞争力的方法之际，绿色科技产业如何失去早期领先地位的经验教训已成为一个重要的教训。
Among western governments and officials, there are three key questions. How was it that so many of the key technologies for the emerging industry were initially developed in the west but have been commercialised in China? How was China able to scale its industry at a time when the west was betting on open markets and globalisation? Has the tilt towards industrial policy over the past five years helped recover any of the lost ground?
西方政府和官员普遍关注三个关键问题：为什么新兴产业的诸多关键技术最初在西方研发，却在中国实现商业化？在西方押注开放市场和全球化之际，中国是如何实现产业规模化发展的？过去五年产业政策的调整是否帮助中国挽回了部分损失？
“We all were asleep at the switch as the Chinese government decided to prioritise these clean energy technologies as a matter of national industrial strategy,” says Geoffrey Pyatt, a former US assistant secretary of energy and diplomat now at the advisory firm McLarty Associates.
“当中国政府决定将这些清洁能源技术作为国家产业战略的优先事项时，我们当时都大意了，”前美国能源部助理部长兼外交官、现就职于麦克拉迪联合咨询公司的杰弗里-皮亚特说。
Having lost out to China in solar, European officials fear their companies might not be able to hang on in other renewable technologies. Although Europe’s wind turbine manufacturers still lead outside China, competition from China-based companies such as Goldwind, xinjiang Wind’s successor, is becoming ever more intense.
在太阳能领域败给中国之后，欧洲官员担心本国企业在其他可再生能源技术领域也难以维持竞争力。尽管欧洲风力涡轮机制造商在中国以外仍处于领先地位，但来自金风科技（新疆风能的后起之秀）等中国企业的竞争日趋激烈。
“In both wind and even the auto sector, Europe still has an industry that it could protect,” says Michal Meidan at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies. “In solar, that’s gone.”
牛津能源研究所的米哈尔-梅丹表示：“无论是在风能领域还是汽车领域，欧洲仍然拥有可以保护的产业。但在太阳能领域，这种情况已经不复存在了。”
In an effort to regain the initiative, Brussels has stepped up its use of trade probes and tariffs to slow the flow of subsidised Chinese goods into the bloc and is pushing more robust efforts to diversify supply chains away from China.
为了重新掌握主动权，布鲁塞尔加大了贸易调查和关税的力度，并正在推动更强有力的措施，使供应链摆脱对中国的依赖。
It is also working on plans to introduce “Made in Europe” targets, akin to the “Made in China 2025” plan Beijing first launched in 2015 to boost domestic content of key goods and innovation.
它还在制定计划，引入“欧洲制造”目标，类似于北京于2015年首次推出的“中国制造2025”计划，旨在提高关键商品和创新产品的国产化率。
In the US, the Biden administration embraced more vigorous industrial policy on cleantech while Donald Trump is putting significant focus on developing alternative sources of rare earths.
在美国，拜登政府采取了更强有力的清洁技术产业政策，而唐纳德-特朗普则将重点放在开发稀土替代资源上。
But some believe such measures may be too little too late. The collapse of Swedish battery champion Northvolt at the end of 2024 and the insolvency of several subsidiaries of Swiss solar-panel maker Meyer Burger in 2025 suggests that Europe will need to do more to support its homegrown companies if it is to compete with China.
但一些人认为，这些措施可能力度不够，也为时已晚。瑞典电池巨头北伏公司在2024年底的倒闭，以及瑞士太阳能电池板制造商梅耶博格旗下多家子公司在2025年的破产，都表明欧洲若想与中国竞争，就必须加大力度扶持本土企业。
Gunter Erfurt, chief executive of Meyer Burger until September 2024, says overcapacity in China is still undercutting European companies. “Europe is now even more trapped [by China] than ever before,” he says.
任期截止2024年9月的梅耶博格公司首席执行官冈特-埃尔福特表示，中国的产能过剩仍在削弱欧洲企业的竞争力。“欧洲如今比以往任何时候都更受制于中国，”他说。
Fatih Birol, executive director of the International Energy Agency, says that “developing technology is like running a marathon”. He adds: “Europe finished the first 10 kilometres ahead of everybody. But China finished the marathon. China gets the gold medal.”
国际能源署执行主任法提赫-比罗尔表示，“技术发展就像跑马拉松”。他补充道：“欧洲在前10公里领先于其他国家。但中国跑完了全程。中国赢得了金牌。”
As it stands today, China now controls more than 80 per cent of production for each key stage of solar panel manufacturing, from polysilicon ingots to wafers, cells and modules. To achieve such dominance, it initially leaned on outside help.
如今，中国已掌控太阳能电池板制造各个关键环节80%以上的产量，从多晶硅锭到硅片、电池片和组件，无一例外。为了取得如此巨大的优势，中国最初依靠外部援助。
One of the early lixs was Martin Green, a professor at the University of New South Wales in Australia, who invented the PERC technology that would go on to be used in about 90 per cent of solar panels. This helped him attract students from around the world to his courses.
早期的联系人之一是马丁-格林，他是澳大利亚新南威尔士大学的教授，发明了PERC技术，这项技术后来被应用于大约90%的太阳能电池板中。这帮助他吸引了来自世界各地的学生来参加他的课程。
插图：宿迁市的一家工厂里，工人们正在组装太阳能电池板。宿迁市供应全球90%以上的太阳能电池板，并在电池供应链中占据主导地位。
Among those students was Shi Zhenrong, the adopted son of a poor Chinese family, who had been sent abroad to study by China’s Shanghai Institute and completed his PhD with Green in 1992. Shi returned to China in 2001 to set up a solar panel company, helped by financial support from the city of Wuxi, eastern China.
这些学生中包括施正荣，他是中国一个贫困家庭的养子，曾被中国上海研究院送往国外留学，并于1992年在格林的指导下完成了博士学位。2001年，施正荣回到中国，在华东城市无锡的财政支持下创办了一家太阳能电池板公司。
Suntech Power would become the world’s largest solar-panel maker and, in 2005, the first privately owned Chinese company to list on the New York Stock Exchange.
尚德电力后来成为全球最大的太阳能电池板制造商，并在2005年成为第一家在纽约证券交易所上市的中国私营企业。
It kicked off a wave of IPOs among China’s growing solar panel industry, which raised billions of dollars and saw several of Green’s team hired as chief technology officers in order to meet US due diligence rules, Green recalls.
格林回忆说，这引发了中国蓬勃发展的太阳能电池板行业的IPO浪潮，筹集了数十亿美元，为了满足美国的尽职调查规定，格林团队中的几名成员被聘为首席技术官。
“There’s a strong Australian connection,” says Green, noting that Shi was not the only one of his students who went back to China to set up solar-panel makers. “We have played a big part in the technical development of the industry.”
格林说：“澳大利亚与中国有着很深的联系。”他指出，施同学并非他唯一一位回国创办太阳能电池板生产企业的学生。“我们为该行业的技术发展做出了巨大贡献。”
Green’s experience is just one example of how research, technical knowhow and equipment spread from the west to China during the 1980s to 2000s. During this period US and European companies regularly sold production lines or other equipment to China and licensed or shared their technology in exchange for access to the Chinese market.
格林的经历只是众多案例之一，它反映了上世纪80年代到本世纪初，西方的研究成果、技术诀窍和设备是如何传播到中国的。在此期间，美国和欧洲公司经常向中国出售生产线或其他设备，并通过授权或共享技术来换取进入中国市场的机会。
“There were different technology transfer channels and mechanisms, but the common thread was the learning-centred approach by the Chinese government and companies,” says Rasmus Lema, an expert on the spread of green technology at the University of Johannesburg in South Africa. “From the beginning, they had a strategic vision of becoming leaders in these technologies.”
“技术转让渠道和机制各不相同，但共同之处在于中国政府和企业都采取了以学习为中心的策略，”南非约翰内斯堡大学绿色技术推广专家拉斯穆斯-莱马表示。“从一开始，他们就立志成为这些技术领域的领导者。”
For years, Germany was a prolific exporter of solar production equipment to China. So much so that Michael Carr, executive director of the US Solar Energy Manufacturers for America Coalition, a trade group, recalls being told during a tour of leading manufacturers in China in 2008 that the production lines were all German. “But we’ve improved them by 20 per cent,” Carr says he was told.
多年来，德国一直是向中国出口太阳能生产设备的主要国家。美国太阳能制造商协会（一个行业组织）的执行董事迈克尔-卡尔回忆说，2008年他参观中国主要制造商时，有人告诉他，这些生产线全部来自德国。“但我们已经将它们的性能提高了20%。”卡尔说，他当时被如此告知。
Similarly Poly Engineering, an Italian maker of polysilicon — the key ingredient in solar panels — transferred key production knowhow to China’s Daqo New Energy in 2008, helping China break the grip on polysilicon supply held by the US, Europe and Japan.
同样，意大利多晶硅制造商Poly Engineering（多晶硅，太阳能电池板的关键成分）于2008年将关键生产技术转让给了中国的重庆大全新能源有限公司，帮助中国打破了美国、欧洲和日本对多晶硅供应的控制。
That same year, Goldwind, now the world’s largest turbine manufacturer, bought a 70 per cent stake in Vensys, a German pioneer of gearless wind turbines.
同年，如今已是全球最大的风力涡轮机制造商金风科技收购了德国无齿轮风力涡轮机先驱企业Vensys七成股份。
Goldwind had licensed Vensys’s technology for manufacture in China five years earlier. “Vensys had a smart nacelle design [the brain of the turbine] and that became the basis of the early Goldwind machines,” recalls Stiesdal, the Danish inventor.
五年之前，金风科技就已获得Vensys的技术授权，在中国进行生产。“Vensys拥有智能的机舱设计（涡轮机的核心部件），这成为了金风科技早期产品的基础，”丹麦发明家斯蒂斯达尔回忆道。
In the early days of the solar industry in the 1980s, there was “very little caution...No one had the fantasy to believe China would compete on an equal footing in 15 years’ time,” says Lema.
莱玛说，在20世纪80年代太阳能产业的早期，“那时候没什么好谨慎的……没有人会幻想过15年后中国能与世界公平竞争”。
But as China’s solar sector became more competitive, companies became more wary about selling their kit. “Meyer Burger supplied equipment but got increasingly nervous about how quickly the Chinese were able to copy it,” says Weber, the solar veteran who was also on the board of Meyer Burger between 2007 and 2010.
但随着中国太阳能行业竞争日益激烈，各公司在销售设备时也变得更加谨慎。“梅耶博格公司供应设备，但越来越担心中国人能如此迅速地仿制我们的产品，”韦伯说道。韦伯是一位太阳能行业资深人士，他曾在2007年至2010年间担任梅耶博格公司的董事。
A turning point came towards the end of the 2000s, as China’s rapid development of factories, encouraged by the crucial development of its own polysilicon industry, helped push the industry into overcapacity.
2000年代末期出现了一个转折点，中国工厂的快速发展，以及自身多晶硅产业的关键性发展，推动了整个行业的产能过剩。
插图：检查人员正在中国天长检查一座光伏电站。目前，中国已控制太阳能电池板制造各个关键环节80%以上的生产。
Solar-panel makers in Germany battled with falling prices, difficulty accessing financing and Chinese competitors who were undercutting aggressively on price but were also offering payment terms of more than 100 days. “Europeans really could not compete,” says Anton Milner, co-founder of Q-Cells, a leading solar-panel maker.
德国太阳能电池板制造商面临着价格下跌、融资困难以及中国竞争对手的挑战，这些中国竞争对手不仅在价格上大幅压低，而且还提供超过100天的付款期限。“欧洲人根本无法与之竞争，”领先的太阳能电池板制造商Q-Cells的联合创始人安东-米尔纳说道。
The industry lobbied the EU to intervene, arguing Chinese companies were getting unfair subsidies.
该行业游说欧盟进行干预，声称中国企业获得了不公平的补贴。
But anti-dumping tariffs the EU imposed on China in 2013 were “too little too late”, argues Michael Schmela, executive adviser at Solar Power Europe.
但欧洲太阳能协会执行顾问迈克尔-施梅拉认为，欧盟在2013年对中国征收的反倾销税“为时已晚，力度也太小”。
Milner’s company Q-Cells filed for bankruptcy in 2012 and was taken over by South Korea’s Hanwha. It was one of several companies succumbing to a brutal wave of consolidation which also rebounded on China’s solar sector, which was struggling with heavy debts.
米尔纳的公司Q-Cells于2012年申请破产，后被韩国韩华集团收购。该公司是众多在残酷的行业整合浪潮中倒下的企业之一，这股浪潮也波及到了当时负债累累的中国太阳能行业。
Shi’s Suntech went bankrupt in 2013. But China, which had made significant advances in automation, efficiency and scale, emerged stronger. By 2018, about 60 per cent of the world’s solar panels were made in China. “It was a rollercoaster ride,” adds Milner.
施正荣的尚德公司在2013年破产。但中国在自动化、效率和规模方面取得了显著进步，并因此变得更加强大。到2018年，全球约60%的太阳能电池板产自中国。“这真是一段过山车般的历程，”米尔纳补充道。
Western governments were slow to realise the implications of China’s renewables boom.
西方各国政府迟迟未能意识到中国可再生能源蓬勃发展所带来的影响。
Jos Delbeke, the EU’s most senior climate official between 2010 and 2018, recalls how the EU initially enjoyed the cost reductions from Chinese technology, and did not see growing trade with it as a threat. “We did not sufficiently realise that China may have been taking over,” he says.
2010年至2018年担任欧盟最高气候官员的约斯-德尔贝克回忆说，欧盟最初乐于享受中国技术带来的成本降低，并没有将与中国日益增长的贸易视为威胁。“我们当时没充分意识到，中国可能正在接管一切，”他说。
Pyatt, at McLarty Associates, says supply chains were taken for granted. “And China offered such a compelling cost structure — [albeit] with a lot of shadow costs, including often atrocious labour and environmental standards,” he added. Human rights groups accuse China of using forced labour in polysilicon production, particularly in xinjiang.
麦克拉迪联合咨询公司的皮亚特表示，供应链一直被视为理所当然。“而且中国提供的成本结构极具吸引力——尽管存在许多隐性成本，包括往往极其恶劣的劳工和环境标准，”他补充道。人权组织指责中国在多晶硅生产中使用强迫劳动，尤其是在新疆地区。
Isabel Hilton, founder of China Dialogue, a non-profit, says that western companies were hampered by a relative lack of support from their governments.
非营利组织“中国对话”的创始人伊莎贝尔-希尔顿表示，西方公司由于缺乏政府的相对支持而受到阻碍。
“There was an ideological commitment to globalisation which was deeply embedded across the western business ecosystem, and an ideological hostility to industrial policy,” she says. “And once China was in the World Trade Organization [from 2001], you had an absolutely straightforward clash of systems and, frankly, China won.”
她表示：“西方商业生态系统中根深蒂固地存在着对全球化的意识形态认同，以及对产业政策的意识形态敌意。而2001年中国加入世界贸易组织后，两种体系之间就出现了直接的冲突，坦白说，中国赢了。”
Kai Wu, a Goldwind vice-president, says that when China entered the sector, it was able to utilise newer technologies. The country’s rapid expansion in infrastructure and a surge in engineering graduates made renewables projects cheaper and faster to build than those in many western countries.
金风科技副总裁吴凯表示，中国进入可再生能源领域时，能够利用更新的技术。中国基础设施的快速扩张和工程专业毕业生的大量涌现，使得可再生能源项目的建设成本更低、速度更快，远胜于许多西方国家。
It has also benefited from a boom in entrepreneurialism. “Every Chinese New Year, there’s a massive number of employees who don’t return to their jobs but go and form their own start-up,” says Charlie Gay, a solar industry veteran who set up a major R&D centre for his former employer, US company Applied Materials, in China.
它也受益于创业精神的蓬勃发展。“每逢春节，都会有大量员工不回公司上班，而是去创办自己的企业，”太阳能行业资深人士查理-盖伊说道。他曾在中国为他的前雇主——美国应用材料公司——建立了一个大型研发中心。
The first Obama administration recognised the importance of clean energy industries, putting in place legislation with measures to boost clean energy production and jobs in the installation sector as well some manufacturing tax credits.
奥巴马第一届政府认识到清洁能源产业的重要性，制定了相关立法，采取措施促进清洁能源的生产和安装行业的就业，并提供一些制造业税收抵免。
But even there, “most of the trade policy was really incentivising overseas production of solar [ie equipment],” says Kate Gordon, chief executive of non-profit California Forward and a former US government energy adviser. “It was just part of a normal, neoliberal approach to trade at the time.”
但即便如此，“当时大部分贸易政策实际上是在鼓励海外生产太阳能（即设备），”非营利组织加州前瞻的首席执行官、前美国政府能源顾问凯特-戈登表示。“这只是当时新自由主义贸易方针的一部分。”
Vince Cable, the UK’s business secretary between 2010 and 2015, remembers how the Green Investment Bank he set up to boost the development of green energy in Britain was reined in by limited funding, before being sold to Australian bank Macquarie in 2017.
英国商务大臣文斯-凯布尔在2010年至2015年期间回忆说，他为促进英国绿色能源发展而设立的绿色投资银行，由于资金有限而受到限制，最终在2017年被出售给了澳大利亚麦格理银行。
“What we’d hoped to do originally was to create a sort of KfW [Germany’s state-owned development bank] type of institution with very substantial borrowing powers as well as equity to operate on a big scale,” he recalls. “In the event, I had to accept that the Treasury was never going to agree to that . . . by 2016 they wanted their money back.”
他回忆说：“我们最初的设想是创建一个类似德国复兴信贷银行的机构，拥有非常强大的借贷能力和股权，以便大规模运作。但最终，我不得不接受财政部永远不会同意这一点……到2016年，他们就要求收回投资了。”
插图：工程师们在中国贵州省生产风力涡轮机叶片。尽管在太阳能领域的竞争中落败，但欧洲风力涡轮机制造商仍然领先于中国，尽管竞争日趋激烈。
Belated attempts to use protectionism to support renewables sometimes backfired. After the US imposed tariffs on Chinese solar imports in 2012, China responded with higher tariffs on polysilicon in 2014, heaping pressure on US companies. When SunEdison in the US filed for bankruptcy in 2016, its patents were sold to China’s GLC-Poly Energy Holdings. Tariffs have also been hard to enforce, as China rerouted supply chains.
迟来的保护主义扶持可再生能源的尝试有时会适得其反。2012年美国对中国太阳能产品加征关税后，中国于2014年对多晶硅产品提高关税，给美国企业带来了巨大压力。2016年，美国SunEdison公司申请破产，其专利被出售给了中国的保利协鑫能源控股有限公司。此外，由于中国调整了供应链，关税也难以有效执行。
“We’ve had to play whack-a-mole for the better part of 15 years,” recalls Timothy Brightbill, a US trade lawyer.
“在过去的15年里，我们一直都在疲于应对各种问题，”美国贸易律师蒂莫西-布莱特比尔回忆道。
As they try to protect what’s left, US and European governments have steadily been taking a much more muscular approach to supporting green industries.
为了保护剩余的资源，美国和欧洲各国政府一直在稳步采取更有力的措施来支持绿色产业。
Under the current European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen, the bloc has introduced measures such as quicker access to EU funds, simpler regulation and reducing energy costs.
在现任欧盟委员会主席乌尔苏拉-冯德莱恩的领导下，欧盟推出了一系列措施，例如加快欧盟资金的获取速度、简化监管以及降低能源成本。
Officials say some results have been encouraging. Chinese wind turbine makers have not made significant inroads into Europe, as feared. Denmark’s Vestas remains the largest wind turbine maker outside China.
官员们表示，部分结果令人鼓舞。正如人们担心的那样，中国风力涡轮机制造商并未在欧洲取得显著进展。丹麦维斯塔斯仍然是除中国以外最大的风力涡轮机制造商。
“The EU’s decisive actions seem to have been effective in strengthening the use of turbines ‘Made in Europe’,” says Christoph Zipf, spokesman for the WindEurope trade group.
“欧盟采取的果断行动似乎有效地加强了‘欧洲制造’涡轮机的使用，”欧洲风能协会发言人克里斯托夫-齐普夫表示。
Yet even after the collapse of Northvolt, efforts to introduce Made in Europe rules setting targets for homegrown content have now had to be delayed due to opposition among EU members such as the Czech Republic, highlighting the difficulties of getting political consensus in such a diverse, democratic system.
然而，即使在北伏公司倒闭之后，由于捷克共和国等欧盟成员国的反对，引入“欧洲制造”规则、为本土内容设定目标的努力现在不得不推迟，这凸显了在这样一个多元化的民主制度中达成政治共识的困难。
In Washington, the Trump administration is rolling back many of the measures in predecessor Joe Biden’s flagship Inflation Reduction Act, leading to concerns it is further eroding the US’s position as China exports more clean technology around the world. “The world is moving towards a decarbonised economy,” says Andrew Light, who worked in both the Obama and Biden administrations.
在华盛顿，特朗普政府正在撤销其前任乔-拜登的旗舰法案《通胀削减法案》中的多项措施，这引发了人们的担忧，即随着中国向世界各地出口更多清洁技术，美国的地位将进一步受到削弱。“世界正在朝着低碳经济的方向发展，”曾在奥巴马和拜登两届政府任职的安德鲁-莱特表示。
插图：瑞典北部北伏公司超级工厂的工人们。这家电池巨头在2024年的破产表明，如果欧洲想要与中国竞争，就需要加大力度扶持本土企业。
Trump has also suspended new leases for offshore wind projects and blocked several projects, threatening an industry where the US could in theory develop an edge, says Gordon at California Forward. “Offshore wind has extremely large component parts and needs to be built and maintained near where it’s installed. So there is an inherent advantage to opt for wind being manufactured locally. We are of course now abandoning it.”
加州前瞻组织的戈登表示，特朗普还暂停了海上风电项目的新租赁，并叫停了多个项目，这威胁到美国理论上可以发展出竞争优势的行业。“海上风电的零部件非常庞大，需要在安装地点附近进行建设和维护。因此，选择在当地制造风电具有固有的优势。而我们现在却放弃了这一点。”
However Ernest Moniz, former US energy secretary, says Trump’s decision to take stakes in rare earth companies Vulcan Elements and ReElement Technologies is a step that has had “way too little attention” and does add up to the steady progress of industrial policy.
然而，美国前能源部长欧内斯特-莫尼兹表示，特朗普决定入股稀土公司Vulcan Elements和ReElement Technologies的举措“受到的关注太少了”，但确实有助于产业政策的稳步发展。
Light says the US could still lead the way in areas such as advanced nuclear technologies and geothermal energy, which shares techniques with oil fracking and thus has attracted attention from oil companies.
莱特表示，美国在先进核技术和地热能等领域仍可能处于领先地位，地热能与石油水力压裂技术有相似之处，因此引起了石油公司的关注。
Birol at the IEA says Europe should now focus on areas where it can gain an edge rather than those commoditised by China, including electricity grid equipment such as electrical transformers and transmission equipment. “Europe has to pick its battles,” he says.
国际能源署的比罗尔表示，欧洲现在应该将重点放在自身能够获得优势的领域，而不是那些被中国商品化的领域，例如电力变压器和输电设备等电网设备。“欧洲必须有所取舍，”他说。
Erfurt at Meyer Burger argues that Europe could still have an opportunity in next-generation solar perovskite technology. However, even there, Europe’s champions are under pressure. Chris Case, chief scientist at perovskite specialist Oxford Photovoltaics, which is headquartered in Britain and manufactures in Berlin, says he is vastly outgunned by R&D spending from competitors in China such as Longi.
梅耶博格公司的埃尔福特认为，欧洲在下一代钙钛矿太阳能电池技术领域仍有机会。然而，即便如此，欧洲的领军企业也面临着压力。总部位于英国、在柏林设有生产基地的钙钛矿专家牛津光伏公司首席科学家克里斯-凯斯表示，与隆基绿能等中国竞争对手相比，他们在研发投入方面远远落后。
Moreover, given the difficulties of accessing the Chinese market, Oxford Photovoltaics, which was spun out of the University of Oxford, felt its best route was to license its technology, for sales only in China, to TrinaSolar, one of China’s largest solar-panel makers.
此外，鉴于进入中国市场的困难，从牛津大学分离出来的牛津光伏公司认为，最好的办法是将其技术授权给中国最大的太阳能电池板制造商之一天合光能，仅供在中国销售。
“How easy would it be for our company to build a factory in China?” says Case. “The answer is, not so easy. To me, the simplest way was to license the technology to China.”
“我们公司在中国建厂有多容易？”凯斯说，“答案是，并不容易。对我来说，最简单的办法就是把这项技术授权给中国。”
Delbeke, the former EU climate official, suggests that the EU should direct some of its defence spending towards renewables, given the dual civilian-military uses of technology such as solar panels that are used on military satellites.
前欧盟气候官员德尔贝克建议，鉴于太阳能电池板等技术既可用于民用也可用于军用，欧盟应该将部分国防开支用于可再生能源，因为这些技术也被用于军用卫星。
The recognition of China’s increasing dominance, he adds, has been a “bitter awakening”.
他补充说，认识到中国日益增强的主导地位，是一个“痛苦的觉醒”。
题图。
In the late 1980s, Denmark’s pioneering wind power sector celebrated a potential new customer. Engineers at Bonus Energy completed an order for 13 turbines from a company in China’s xinjiang region, which were delivered on the Trans-Siberian railway.
上世纪80年代末，丹麦风电行业迎来了一个潜在的新客户。Bonus能源公司的工程师们完成了来自中国新疆一家公司的13台风力涡轮机的订单，这些涡轮机通过西伯利亚铁路运送至中国。
The turbines were a proof of concept to help show Chinese officials that it was “doable, and if you got the technology right, it was reliable”, recalls Henrik Stiesdal, sometimes known as the “godfather” of the wind industry for his influential turbine inventions and who at the time was working for Bonus.
亨里克-斯蒂斯达尔回忆说，这批涡轮机是一次概念验证，意在向中国官员证明风电“是可行的，只要技术过关，就能稳定运行”。斯蒂斯达尔因其具有影响力的涡轮机发明而被誉为风能行业的“教父”，当时他正在Bonus公司工作。
Denmark even threw in some financial incentives: China’s xinjiang Wind Energy Corporation received funding from Danida, the country’s development aid agency, for the turbines.
丹麦甚至额外提供了一些资金支持：中国新疆风能公司从丹麦国际开发署获得了用于建造风力涡轮机的资金。
Nearly four decades later, the tables have completely turned. China has become the global powerhouse in renewable energy technologies, supplying more than 90 per cent of the world’s solar panels and dominating battery supply chains, as well as the processing of rare earth materials that are critical to the industry.
近四十年后，形势发生了彻底的转变。中国已成为全球可再生能源技术强国，供应全球90%以上的太阳能电池板，主导着电池供应链，并主导着对该行业至关重要的稀土材料的加工。
China’s enormous manufacturing capacity has lowered costs of solar power beyond the most ambitious projections of industry executives, triggering a rush to adopt it around the world. But competition from China has also helped tip swaths of US and European industry into bankruptcy.
中国庞大的制造业产能已将太阳能发电成本降至远超业内高管最乐观预期的水平，引发了全球范围内的太阳能热潮。但来自中国的竞争也导致美国和欧洲大片产业破产。
“We created the market [for solar] and made it interesting for investors,” says Eicke Weber, a solar industry veteran and former co-chairman of the European Solar Manufacturing Council. “But we forgot to make industrial policies.”
“我们创造了太阳能市场，并使其对投资者具有吸引力，”太阳能行业资深人士、欧洲太阳能制造委员会前联合主席艾克-韦伯表示，“但我们却忘记制定产业政策。”
At a time when Europe and the US are both scrambling to find ways to respond to China’s industrial competitiveness, the experience of how the green tech industry lost its early lead has become a central lesson.
在欧洲和美国都在努力寻找应对中国产业竞争力的方法之际，绿色科技产业如何失去早期领先地位的经验教训已成为一个重要的教训。
Among western governments and officials, there are three key questions. How was it that so many of the key technologies for the emerging industry were initially developed in the west but have been commercialised in China? How was China able to scale its industry at a time when the west was betting on open markets and globalisation? Has the tilt towards industrial policy over the past five years helped recover any of the lost ground?
西方政府和官员普遍关注三个关键问题：为什么新兴产业的诸多关键技术最初在西方研发，却在中国实现商业化？在西方押注开放市场和全球化之际，中国是如何实现产业规模化发展的？过去五年产业政策的调整是否帮助中国挽回了部分损失？
“We all were asleep at the switch as the Chinese government decided to prioritise these clean energy technologies as a matter of national industrial strategy,” says Geoffrey Pyatt, a former US assistant secretary of energy and diplomat now at the advisory firm McLarty Associates.
“当中国政府决定将这些清洁能源技术作为国家产业战略的优先事项时，我们当时都大意了，”前美国能源部助理部长兼外交官、现就职于麦克拉迪联合咨询公司的杰弗里-皮亚特说。
Having lost out to China in solar, European officials fear their companies might not be able to hang on in other renewable technologies. Although Europe’s wind turbine manufacturers still lead outside China, competition from China-based companies such as Goldwind, xinjiang Wind’s successor, is becoming ever more intense.
在太阳能领域败给中国之后，欧洲官员担心本国企业在其他可再生能源技术领域也难以维持竞争力。尽管欧洲风力涡轮机制造商在中国以外仍处于领先地位，但来自金风科技（新疆风能的后起之秀）等中国企业的竞争日趋激烈。
“In both wind and even the auto sector, Europe still has an industry that it could protect,” says Michal Meidan at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies. “In solar, that’s gone.”
牛津能源研究所的米哈尔-梅丹表示：“无论是在风能领域还是汽车领域，欧洲仍然拥有可以保护的产业。但在太阳能领域，这种情况已经不复存在了。”
In an effort to regain the initiative, Brussels has stepped up its use of trade probes and tariffs to slow the flow of subsidised Chinese goods into the bloc and is pushing more robust efforts to diversify supply chains away from China.
为了重新掌握主动权，布鲁塞尔加大了贸易调查和关税的力度，并正在推动更强有力的措施，使供应链摆脱对中国的依赖。
It is also working on plans to introduce “Made in Europe” targets, akin to the “Made in China 2025” plan Beijing first launched in 2015 to boost domestic content of key goods and innovation.
它还在制定计划，引入“欧洲制造”目标，类似于北京于2015年首次推出的“中国制造2025”计划，旨在提高关键商品和创新产品的国产化率。
In the US, the Biden administration embraced more vigorous industrial policy on cleantech while Donald Trump is putting significant focus on developing alternative sources of rare earths.
在美国，拜登政府采取了更强有力的清洁技术产业政策，而唐纳德-特朗普则将重点放在开发稀土替代资源上。
But some believe such measures may be too little too late. The collapse of Swedish battery champion Northvolt at the end of 2024 and the insolvency of several subsidiaries of Swiss solar-panel maker Meyer Burger in 2025 suggests that Europe will need to do more to support its homegrown companies if it is to compete with China.
但一些人认为，这些措施可能力度不够，也为时已晚。瑞典电池巨头北伏公司在2024年底的倒闭，以及瑞士太阳能电池板制造商梅耶博格旗下多家子公司在2025年的破产，都表明欧洲若想与中国竞争，就必须加大力度扶持本土企业。
Gunter Erfurt, chief executive of Meyer Burger until September 2024, says overcapacity in China is still undercutting European companies. “Europe is now even more trapped [by China] than ever before,” he says.
任期截止2024年9月的梅耶博格公司首席执行官冈特-埃尔福特表示，中国的产能过剩仍在削弱欧洲企业的竞争力。“欧洲如今比以往任何时候都更受制于中国，”他说。
Fatih Birol, executive director of the International Energy Agency, says that “developing technology is like running a marathon”. He adds: “Europe finished the first 10 kilometres ahead of everybody. But China finished the marathon. China gets the gold medal.”
国际能源署执行主任法提赫-比罗尔表示，“技术发展就像跑马拉松”。他补充道：“欧洲在前10公里领先于其他国家。但中国跑完了全程。中国赢得了金牌。”
As it stands today, China now controls more than 80 per cent of production for each key stage of solar panel manufacturing, from polysilicon ingots to wafers, cells and modules. To achieve such dominance, it initially leaned on outside help.
如今，中国已掌控太阳能电池板制造各个关键环节80%以上的产量，从多晶硅锭到硅片、电池片和组件，无一例外。为了取得如此巨大的优势，中国最初依靠外部援助。
One of the early lixs was Martin Green, a professor at the University of New South Wales in Australia, who invented the PERC technology that would go on to be used in about 90 per cent of solar panels. This helped him attract students from around the world to his courses.
早期的联系人之一是马丁-格林，他是澳大利亚新南威尔士大学的教授，发明了PERC技术，这项技术后来被应用于大约90%的太阳能电池板中。这帮助他吸引了来自世界各地的学生来参加他的课程。
插图：宿迁市的一家工厂里，工人们正在组装太阳能电池板。宿迁市供应全球90%以上的太阳能电池板，并在电池供应链中占据主导地位。
Among those students was Shi Zhenrong, the adopted son of a poor Chinese family, who had been sent abroad to study by China’s Shanghai Institute and completed his PhD with Green in 1992. Shi returned to China in 2001 to set up a solar panel company, helped by financial support from the city of Wuxi, eastern China.
这些学生中包括施正荣，他是中国一个贫困家庭的养子，曾被中国上海研究院送往国外留学，并于1992年在格林的指导下完成了博士学位。2001年，施正荣回到中国，在华东城市无锡的财政支持下创办了一家太阳能电池板公司。
Suntech Power would become the world’s largest solar-panel maker and, in 2005, the first privately owned Chinese company to list on the New York Stock Exchange.
尚德电力后来成为全球最大的太阳能电池板制造商，并在2005年成为第一家在纽约证券交易所上市的中国私营企业。
It kicked off a wave of IPOs among China’s growing solar panel industry, which raised billions of dollars and saw several of Green’s team hired as chief technology officers in order to meet US due diligence rules, Green recalls.
格林回忆说，这引发了中国蓬勃发展的太阳能电池板行业的IPO浪潮，筹集了数十亿美元，为了满足美国的尽职调查规定，格林团队中的几名成员被聘为首席技术官。
“There’s a strong Australian connection,” says Green, noting that Shi was not the only one of his students who went back to China to set up solar-panel makers. “We have played a big part in the technical development of the industry.”
格林说：“澳大利亚与中国有着很深的联系。”他指出，施同学并非他唯一一位回国创办太阳能电池板生产企业的学生。“我们为该行业的技术发展做出了巨大贡献。”
Green’s experience is just one example of how research, technical knowhow and equipment spread from the west to China during the 1980s to 2000s. During this period US and European companies regularly sold production lines or other equipment to China and licensed or shared their technology in exchange for access to the Chinese market.
格林的经历只是众多案例之一，它反映了上世纪80年代到本世纪初，西方的研究成果、技术诀窍和设备是如何传播到中国的。在此期间，美国和欧洲公司经常向中国出售生产线或其他设备，并通过授权或共享技术来换取进入中国市场的机会。
“There were different technology transfer channels and mechanisms, but the common thread was the learning-centred approach by the Chinese government and companies,” says Rasmus Lema, an expert on the spread of green technology at the University of Johannesburg in South Africa. “From the beginning, they had a strategic vision of becoming leaders in these technologies.”
“技术转让渠道和机制各不相同，但共同之处在于中国政府和企业都采取了以学习为中心的策略，”南非约翰内斯堡大学绿色技术推广专家拉斯穆斯-莱马表示。“从一开始，他们就立志成为这些技术领域的领导者。”
For years, Germany was a prolific exporter of solar production equipment to China. So much so that Michael Carr, executive director of the US Solar Energy Manufacturers for America Coalition, a trade group, recalls being told during a tour of leading manufacturers in China in 2008 that the production lines were all German. “But we’ve improved them by 20 per cent,” Carr says he was told.
多年来，德国一直是向中国出口太阳能生产设备的主要国家。美国太阳能制造商协会（一个行业组织）的执行董事迈克尔-卡尔回忆说，2008年他参观中国主要制造商时，有人告诉他，这些生产线全部来自德国。“但我们已经将它们的性能提高了20%。”卡尔说，他当时被如此告知。
Similarly Poly Engineering, an Italian maker of polysilicon — the key ingredient in solar panels — transferred key production knowhow to China’s Daqo New Energy in 2008, helping China break the grip on polysilicon supply held by the US, Europe and Japan.
同样，意大利多晶硅制造商Poly Engineering（多晶硅，太阳能电池板的关键成分）于2008年将关键生产技术转让给了中国的重庆大全新能源有限公司，帮助中国打破了美国、欧洲和日本对多晶硅供应的控制。
That same year, Goldwind, now the world’s largest turbine manufacturer, bought a 70 per cent stake in Vensys, a German pioneer of gearless wind turbines.
同年，如今已是全球最大的风力涡轮机制造商金风科技收购了德国无齿轮风力涡轮机先驱企业Vensys七成股份。
Goldwind had licensed Vensys’s technology for manufacture in China five years earlier. “Vensys had a smart nacelle design [the brain of the turbine] and that became the basis of the early Goldwind machines,” recalls Stiesdal, the Danish inventor.
五年之前，金风科技就已获得Vensys的技术授权，在中国进行生产。“Vensys拥有智能的机舱设计（涡轮机的核心部件），这成为了金风科技早期产品的基础，”丹麦发明家斯蒂斯达尔回忆道。
In the early days of the solar industry in the 1980s, there was “very little caution...No one had the fantasy to believe China would compete on an equal footing in 15 years’ time,” says Lema.
莱玛说，在20世纪80年代太阳能产业的早期，“那时候没什么好谨慎的……没有人会幻想过15年后中国能与世界公平竞争”。
But as China’s solar sector became more competitive, companies became more wary about selling their kit. “Meyer Burger supplied equipment but got increasingly nervous about how quickly the Chinese were able to copy it,” says Weber, the solar veteran who was also on the board of Meyer Burger between 2007 and 2010.
但随着中国太阳能行业竞争日益激烈，各公司在销售设备时也变得更加谨慎。“梅耶博格公司供应设备，但越来越担心中国人能如此迅速地仿制我们的产品，”韦伯说道。韦伯是一位太阳能行业资深人士，他曾在2007年至2010年间担任梅耶博格公司的董事。
A turning point came towards the end of the 2000s, as China’s rapid development of factories, encouraged by the crucial development of its own polysilicon industry, helped push the industry into overcapacity.
2000年代末期出现了一个转折点，中国工厂的快速发展，以及自身多晶硅产业的关键性发展，推动了整个行业的产能过剩。
插图：检查人员正在中国天长检查一座光伏电站。目前，中国已控制太阳能电池板制造各个关键环节80%以上的生产。
Solar-panel makers in Germany battled with falling prices, difficulty accessing financing and Chinese competitors who were undercutting aggressively on price but were also offering payment terms of more than 100 days. “Europeans really could not compete,” says Anton Milner, co-founder of Q-Cells, a leading solar-panel maker.
德国太阳能电池板制造商面临着价格下跌、融资困难以及中国竞争对手的挑战，这些中国竞争对手不仅在价格上大幅压低，而且还提供超过100天的付款期限。“欧洲人根本无法与之竞争，”领先的太阳能电池板制造商Q-Cells的联合创始人安东-米尔纳说道。
The industry lobbied the EU to intervene, arguing Chinese companies were getting unfair subsidies.
该行业游说欧盟进行干预，声称中国企业获得了不公平的补贴。
But anti-dumping tariffs the EU imposed on China in 2013 were “too little too late”, argues Michael Schmela, executive adviser at Solar Power Europe.
但欧洲太阳能协会执行顾问迈克尔-施梅拉认为，欧盟在2013年对中国征收的反倾销税“为时已晚，力度也太小”。
Milner’s company Q-Cells filed for bankruptcy in 2012 and was taken over by South Korea’s Hanwha. It was one of several companies succumbing to a brutal wave of consolidation which also rebounded on China’s solar sector, which was struggling with heavy debts.
米尔纳的公司Q-Cells于2012年申请破产，后被韩国韩华集团收购。该公司是众多在残酷的行业整合浪潮中倒下的企业之一，这股浪潮也波及到了当时负债累累的中国太阳能行业。
Shi’s Suntech went bankrupt in 2013. But China, which had made significant advances in automation, efficiency and scale, emerged stronger. By 2018, about 60 per cent of the world’s solar panels were made in China. “It was a rollercoaster ride,” adds Milner.
施正荣的尚德公司在2013年破产。但中国在自动化、效率和规模方面取得了显著进步，并因此变得更加强大。到2018年，全球约60%的太阳能电池板产自中国。“这真是一段过山车般的历程，”米尔纳补充道。
Western governments were slow to realise the implications of China’s renewables boom.
西方各国政府迟迟未能意识到中国可再生能源蓬勃发展所带来的影响。
Jos Delbeke, the EU’s most senior climate official between 2010 and 2018, recalls how the EU initially enjoyed the cost reductions from Chinese technology, and did not see growing trade with it as a threat. “We did not sufficiently realise that China may have been taking over,” he says.
2010年至2018年担任欧盟最高气候官员的约斯-德尔贝克回忆说，欧盟最初乐于享受中国技术带来的成本降低，并没有将与中国日益增长的贸易视为威胁。“我们当时没充分意识到，中国可能正在接管一切，”他说。
Pyatt, at McLarty Associates, says supply chains were taken for granted. “And China offered such a compelling cost structure — [albeit] with a lot of shadow costs, including often atrocious labour and environmental standards,” he added. Human rights groups accuse China of using forced labour in polysilicon production, particularly in xinjiang.
麦克拉迪联合咨询公司的皮亚特表示，供应链一直被视为理所当然。“而且中国提供的成本结构极具吸引力——尽管存在许多隐性成本，包括往往极其恶劣的劳工和环境标准，”他补充道。人权组织指责中国在多晶硅生产中使用强迫劳动，尤其是在新疆地区。
Isabel Hilton, founder of China Dialogue, a non-profit, says that western companies were hampered by a relative lack of support from their governments.
非营利组织“中国对话”的创始人伊莎贝尔-希尔顿表示，西方公司由于缺乏政府的相对支持而受到阻碍。
“There was an ideological commitment to globalisation which was deeply embedded across the western business ecosystem, and an ideological hostility to industrial policy,” she says. “And once China was in the World Trade Organization [from 2001], you had an absolutely straightforward clash of systems and, frankly, China won.”
她表示：“西方商业生态系统中根深蒂固地存在着对全球化的意识形态认同，以及对产业政策的意识形态敌意。而2001年中国加入世界贸易组织后，两种体系之间就出现了直接的冲突，坦白说，中国赢了。”
Kai Wu, a Goldwind vice-president, says that when China entered the sector, it was able to utilise newer technologies. The country’s rapid expansion in infrastructure and a surge in engineering graduates made renewables projects cheaper and faster to build than those in many western countries.
金风科技副总裁吴凯表示，中国进入可再生能源领域时，能够利用更新的技术。中国基础设施的快速扩张和工程专业毕业生的大量涌现，使得可再生能源项目的建设成本更低、速度更快，远胜于许多西方国家。
It has also benefited from a boom in entrepreneurialism. “Every Chinese New Year, there’s a massive number of employees who don’t return to their jobs but go and form their own start-up,” says Charlie Gay, a solar industry veteran who set up a major R&D centre for his former employer, US company Applied Materials, in China.
它也受益于创业精神的蓬勃发展。“每逢春节，都会有大量员工不回公司上班，而是去创办自己的企业，”太阳能行业资深人士查理-盖伊说道。他曾在中国为他的前雇主——美国应用材料公司——建立了一个大型研发中心。
The first Obama administration recognised the importance of clean energy industries, putting in place legislation with measures to boost clean energy production and jobs in the installation sector as well some manufacturing tax credits.
奥巴马第一届政府认识到清洁能源产业的重要性，制定了相关立法，采取措施促进清洁能源的生产和安装行业的就业，并提供一些制造业税收抵免。
But even there, “most of the trade policy was really incentivising overseas production of solar [ie equipment],” says Kate Gordon, chief executive of non-profit California Forward and a former US government energy adviser. “It was just part of a normal, neoliberal approach to trade at the time.”
但即便如此，“当时大部分贸易政策实际上是在鼓励海外生产太阳能（即设备），”非营利组织加州前瞻的首席执行官、前美国政府能源顾问凯特-戈登表示。“这只是当时新自由主义贸易方针的一部分。”
Vince Cable, the UK’s business secretary between 2010 and 2015, remembers how the Green Investment Bank he set up to boost the development of green energy in Britain was reined in by limited funding, before being sold to Australian bank Macquarie in 2017.
英国商务大臣文斯-凯布尔在2010年至2015年期间回忆说，他为促进英国绿色能源发展而设立的绿色投资银行，由于资金有限而受到限制，最终在2017年被出售给了澳大利亚麦格理银行。
“What we’d hoped to do originally was to create a sort of KfW [Germany’s state-owned development bank] type of institution with very substantial borrowing powers as well as equity to operate on a big scale,” he recalls. “In the event, I had to accept that the Treasury was never going to agree to that . . . by 2016 they wanted their money back.”
他回忆说：“我们最初的设想是创建一个类似德国复兴信贷银行的机构，拥有非常强大的借贷能力和股权，以便大规模运作。但最终，我不得不接受财政部永远不会同意这一点……到2016年，他们就要求收回投资了。”
插图：工程师们在中国贵州省生产风力涡轮机叶片。尽管在太阳能领域的竞争中落败，但欧洲风力涡轮机制造商仍然领先于中国，尽管竞争日趋激烈。
Belated attempts to use protectionism to support renewables sometimes backfired. After the US imposed tariffs on Chinese solar imports in 2012, China responded with higher tariffs on polysilicon in 2014, heaping pressure on US companies. When SunEdison in the US filed for bankruptcy in 2016, its patents were sold to China’s GLC-Poly Energy Holdings. Tariffs have also been hard to enforce, as China rerouted supply chains.
迟来的保护主义扶持可再生能源的尝试有时会适得其反。2012年美国对中国太阳能产品加征关税后，中国于2014年对多晶硅产品提高关税，给美国企业带来了巨大压力。2016年，美国SunEdison公司申请破产，其专利被出售给了中国的保利协鑫能源控股有限公司。此外，由于中国调整了供应链，关税也难以有效执行。
“We’ve had to play whack-a-mole for the better part of 15 years,” recalls Timothy Brightbill, a US trade lawyer.
“在过去的15年里，我们一直都在疲于应对各种问题，”美国贸易律师蒂莫西-布莱特比尔回忆道。
As they try to protect what’s left, US and European governments have steadily been taking a much more muscular approach to supporting green industries.
为了保护剩余的资源，美国和欧洲各国政府一直在稳步采取更有力的措施来支持绿色产业。
Under the current European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen, the bloc has introduced measures such as quicker access to EU funds, simpler regulation and reducing energy costs.
在现任欧盟委员会主席乌尔苏拉-冯德莱恩的领导下，欧盟推出了一系列措施，例如加快欧盟资金的获取速度、简化监管以及降低能源成本。
Officials say some results have been encouraging. Chinese wind turbine makers have not made significant inroads into Europe, as feared. Denmark’s Vestas remains the largest wind turbine maker outside China.
官员们表示，部分结果令人鼓舞。正如人们担心的那样，中国风力涡轮机制造商并未在欧洲取得显著进展。丹麦维斯塔斯仍然是除中国以外最大的风力涡轮机制造商。
“The EU’s decisive actions seem to have been effective in strengthening the use of turbines ‘Made in Europe’,” says Christoph Zipf, spokesman for the WindEurope trade group.
“欧盟采取的果断行动似乎有效地加强了‘欧洲制造’涡轮机的使用，”欧洲风能协会发言人克里斯托夫-齐普夫表示。
Yet even after the collapse of Northvolt, efforts to introduce Made in Europe rules setting targets for homegrown content have now had to be delayed due to opposition among EU members such as the Czech Republic, highlighting the difficulties of getting political consensus in such a diverse, democratic system.
然而，即使在北伏公司倒闭之后，由于捷克共和国等欧盟成员国的反对，引入“欧洲制造”规则、为本土内容设定目标的努力现在不得不推迟，这凸显了在这样一个多元化的民主制度中达成政治共识的困难。
In Washington, the Trump administration is rolling back many of the measures in predecessor Joe Biden’s flagship Inflation Reduction Act, leading to concerns it is further eroding the US’s position as China exports more clean technology around the world. “The world is moving towards a decarbonised economy,” says Andrew Light, who worked in both the Obama and Biden administrations.
在华盛顿，特朗普政府正在撤销其前任乔-拜登的旗舰法案《通胀削减法案》中的多项措施，这引发了人们的担忧，即随着中国向世界各地出口更多清洁技术，美国的地位将进一步受到削弱。“世界正在朝着低碳经济的方向发展，”曾在奥巴马和拜登两届政府任职的安德鲁-莱特表示。
插图：瑞典北部北伏公司超级工厂的工人们。这家电池巨头在2024年的破产表明，如果欧洲想要与中国竞争，就需要加大力度扶持本土企业。
Trump has also suspended new leases for offshore wind projects and blocked several projects, threatening an industry where the US could in theory develop an edge, says Gordon at California Forward. “Offshore wind has extremely large component parts and needs to be built and maintained near where it’s installed. So there is an inherent advantage to opt for wind being manufactured locally. We are of course now abandoning it.”
加州前瞻组织的戈登表示，特朗普还暂停了海上风电项目的新租赁，并叫停了多个项目，这威胁到美国理论上可以发展出竞争优势的行业。“海上风电的零部件非常庞大，需要在安装地点附近进行建设和维护。因此，选择在当地制造风电具有固有的优势。而我们现在却放弃了这一点。”
However Ernest Moniz, former US energy secretary, says Trump’s decision to take stakes in rare earth companies Vulcan Elements and ReElement Technologies is a step that has had “way too little attention” and does add up to the steady progress of industrial policy.
然而，美国前能源部长欧内斯特-莫尼兹表示，特朗普决定入股稀土公司Vulcan Elements和ReElement Technologies的举措“受到的关注太少了”，但确实有助于产业政策的稳步发展。
Light says the US could still lead the way in areas such as advanced nuclear technologies and geothermal energy, which shares techniques with oil fracking and thus has attracted attention from oil companies.
莱特表示，美国在先进核技术和地热能等领域仍可能处于领先地位，地热能与石油水力压裂技术有相似之处，因此引起了石油公司的关注。
Birol at the IEA says Europe should now focus on areas where it can gain an edge rather than those commoditised by China, including electricity grid equipment such as electrical transformers and transmission equipment. “Europe has to pick its battles,” he says.
国际能源署的比罗尔表示，欧洲现在应该将重点放在自身能够获得优势的领域，而不是那些被中国商品化的领域，例如电力变压器和输电设备等电网设备。“欧洲必须有所取舍，”他说。
Erfurt at Meyer Burger argues that Europe could still have an opportunity in next-generation solar perovskite technology. However, even there, Europe’s champions are under pressure. Chris Case, chief scientist at perovskite specialist Oxford Photovoltaics, which is headquartered in Britain and manufactures in Berlin, says he is vastly outgunned by R&D spending from competitors in China such as Longi.
梅耶博格公司的埃尔福特认为，欧洲在下一代钙钛矿太阳能电池技术领域仍有机会。然而，即便如此，欧洲的领军企业也面临着压力。总部位于英国、在柏林设有生产基地的钙钛矿专家牛津光伏公司首席科学家克里斯-凯斯表示，与隆基绿能等中国竞争对手相比，他们在研发投入方面远远落后。
Moreover, given the difficulties of accessing the Chinese market, Oxford Photovoltaics, which was spun out of the University of Oxford, felt its best route was to license its technology, for sales only in China, to TrinaSolar, one of China’s largest solar-panel makers.
此外，鉴于进入中国市场的困难，从牛津大学分离出来的牛津光伏公司认为，最好的办法是将其技术授权给中国最大的太阳能电池板制造商之一天合光能，仅供在中国销售。
“How easy would it be for our company to build a factory in China?” says Case. “The answer is, not so easy. To me, the simplest way was to license the technology to China.”
“我们公司在中国建厂有多容易？”凯斯说，“答案是，并不容易。对我来说，最简单的办法就是把这项技术授权给中国。”
Delbeke, the former EU climate official, suggests that the EU should direct some of its defence spending towards renewables, given the dual civilian-military uses of technology such as solar panels that are used on military satellites.
前欧盟气候官员德尔贝克建议，鉴于太阳能电池板等技术既可用于民用也可用于军用，欧盟应该将部分国防开支用于可再生能源，因为这些技术也被用于军用卫星。
The recognition of China’s increasing dominance, he adds, has been a “bitter awakening”.
他补充说，认识到中国日益增强的主导地位，是一个“痛苦的觉醒”。
评论翻译
@K. Morlock
The currently observed only half hearted transition to EVs in Europe in the name of “Technologieoffenheit” shows a saddening lack of strategic industrial policy. Instead of consequently pushing the technology which by the law of simple physics is bound to completely dominate the car sector in 10 years, Europe is affording itself the luxury of daydreaming about hydrogen or green fuels or even klinging to ICE nostalgia, instead of focusing on keeping at least the car industry in the race even if the solar industry has been lost already…
欧洲目前打着“技术开放性”的旗号，对电动汽车的转型半心半意，这种做法暴露了其战略性产业政策的严重缺失。欧洲本应全力推动这项技术——根据基本物理定律，它注定将在十年内完全主宰汽车行业——却沉溺于幻想氢能或绿色燃料，甚至对内燃机怀有不切实际的怀旧情结，而非专注于至少让汽车产业保持竞争力，即便太阳能产业已被彻底错失……
@Ilan Michael
Typical Anglo-Saxon bs. If the US is the main arms or software supplier, it is fine, if Germany is/was the main vehicle exporter, it is fine, no tears, no FT articles. If China dominates a sector, omg, what are we doing now? Let's bring them down! Let's go Yankees! Bring Disaster!
经典盎格鲁-撒克逊双标。美国是主要军火或软件供应商，大家照样心安理得；德国曾是汽车出口大国，同样无人扼腕，更不会见诸《金融时报》。而一旦中国称霸某个领域，天啊！我们该怎么办？快打倒他们！美利坚万岁！降下灾祸吧！
@my tu'pence
The lesson is “don’t cry over spilt milk”.
教训就是“覆水难收”。
There is absolutely no chance to recover volume with incremental development.
靠渐进式发展绝无可能恢复规模。
Only technology jumps can help you do so. Abd even then they need to be very well protected, ring-fenced and financially supported to survive and be able to scale up.
唯有技术飞跃才能实现。即便如此，这些技术也需要严密保护、独立运营并获得资金支持才能生存并实现规模化。
Except given the current level of (political) confusion and hand wringing in Europe I’m a tad sceptical that we’ll get our act together in time.
但鉴于欧洲当前的政治混乱和手足无措的状态，我对我们能否及时整顿好局面持怀疑态度。
@Paperclip
It’s never too late to do the right thing. Keep going ahead, keep innovating, until we can hopefully leapfrog the Chinese technology
正确的事做起来永远不嫌迟。继续前进，持续创新，直至我们有望实现技术反超中国。
@Marxwasrightagain
Why's there this precondition of sort to always block China from any progress or improvement? Can't you innovate without having this hostile attitude of wishing failure to China? In the end such mentality is useless to putting an end to a worsening climate disaster...
为何总要设下阻碍中国进步的先决条件？难道不能抛开这种“愿中国失败”的敌意来创新吗？这种心态终究无助于遏制日益恶化的气候灾难...
@sixseven
Where’s the hostility? Paperclip is simply proposing more innovation and some healthy competition
哪来的敌意？@Paperclip明明是在呼吁更多创新和良性竞争
@ilovelife
This is the way. Remove regulations, emphasise education, creativity, freedom, and encourage entrepreneurship. The West will come back.
这才是正路：放松管制，狠抓教育、创造力和自由，鼓励创业。西方一定能东山再起。
@ZZ Bottom
The initial knowledge transfer has meant that China has been able to scale up production quick enough that there is a possible route away from complete climate disaster - for that we should all be very grateful.
最初的技术转让使中国得以迅速扩大生产规模，为避免彻底的气候灾难开辟了一条可能的出路——对此我们都应心怀感激。
Hopefully there will be some knowledge transfer back to the West and at the same time there will be a move away from neoliberalism in the West (and whatever system is currently in place in the US) to a system that is able to better plan its economy and rapidly scale up domestic renewables production.
希望未来西方也能从中国那里学回一些技术，同时摆脱新自由主义（以及美国现行体制）的束缚，转向能够更有效规划经济、快速提升国内可再生能源产量的制度体系。
The currently observed only half hearted transition to EVs in Europe in the name of “Technologieoffenheit” shows a saddening lack of strategic industrial policy. Instead of consequently pushing the technology which by the law of simple physics is bound to completely dominate the car sector in 10 years, Europe is affording itself the luxury of daydreaming about hydrogen or green fuels or even klinging to ICE nostalgia, instead of focusing on keeping at least the car industry in the race even if the solar industry has been lost already…
欧洲目前打着“技术开放性”的旗号，对电动汽车的转型半心半意，这种做法暴露了其战略性产业政策的严重缺失。欧洲本应全力推动这项技术——根据基本物理定律，它注定将在十年内完全主宰汽车行业——却沉溺于幻想氢能或绿色燃料，甚至对内燃机怀有不切实际的怀旧情结，而非专注于至少让汽车产业保持竞争力，即便太阳能产业已被彻底错失……
@Ilan Michael
Typical Anglo-Saxon bs. If the US is the main arms or software supplier, it is fine, if Germany is/was the main vehicle exporter, it is fine, no tears, no FT articles. If China dominates a sector, omg, what are we doing now? Let's bring them down! Let's go Yankees! Bring Disaster!
经典盎格鲁-撒克逊双标。美国是主要军火或软件供应商，大家照样心安理得；德国曾是汽车出口大国，同样无人扼腕，更不会见诸《金融时报》。而一旦中国称霸某个领域，天啊！我们该怎么办？快打倒他们！美利坚万岁！降下灾祸吧！
@my tu'pence
The lesson is “don’t cry over spilt milk”.
教训就是“覆水难收”。
There is absolutely no chance to recover volume with incremental development.
靠渐进式发展绝无可能恢复规模。
Only technology jumps can help you do so. Abd even then they need to be very well protected, ring-fenced and financially supported to survive and be able to scale up.
唯有技术飞跃才能实现。即便如此，这些技术也需要严密保护、独立运营并获得资金支持才能生存并实现规模化。
Except given the current level of (political) confusion and hand wringing in Europe I’m a tad sceptical that we’ll get our act together in time.
但鉴于欧洲当前的政治混乱和手足无措的状态，我对我们能否及时整顿好局面持怀疑态度。
@Paperclip
It’s never too late to do the right thing. Keep going ahead, keep innovating, until we can hopefully leapfrog the Chinese technology
正确的事做起来永远不嫌迟。继续前进，持续创新，直至我们有望实现技术反超中国。
@Marxwasrightagain
Why's there this precondition of sort to always block China from any progress or improvement? Can't you innovate without having this hostile attitude of wishing failure to China? In the end such mentality is useless to putting an end to a worsening climate disaster...
为何总要设下阻碍中国进步的先决条件？难道不能抛开这种“愿中国失败”的敌意来创新吗？这种心态终究无助于遏制日益恶化的气候灾难...
@sixseven
Where’s the hostility? Paperclip is simply proposing more innovation and some healthy competition
哪来的敌意？@Paperclip明明是在呼吁更多创新和良性竞争
@ilovelife
This is the way. Remove regulations, emphasise education, creativity, freedom, and encourage entrepreneurship. The West will come back.
这才是正路：放松管制，狠抓教育、创造力和自由，鼓励创业。西方一定能东山再起。
@ZZ Bottom
The initial knowledge transfer has meant that China has been able to scale up production quick enough that there is a possible route away from complete climate disaster - for that we should all be very grateful.
最初的技术转让使中国得以迅速扩大生产规模，为避免彻底的气候灾难开辟了一条可能的出路——对此我们都应心怀感激。
Hopefully there will be some knowledge transfer back to the West and at the same time there will be a move away from neoliberalism in the West (and whatever system is currently in place in the US) to a system that is able to better plan its economy and rapidly scale up domestic renewables production.
希望未来西方也能从中国那里学回一些技术，同时摆脱新自由主义（以及美国现行体制）的束缚，转向能够更有效规划经济、快速提升国内可再生能源产量的制度体系。
