北京：一座全部实现清洁能源发电的城市？

When Beijing shut its last coal-fired power station this month, state media trumpeted the smog-plagued city as China’s first to have all its power plants fuelled by clean energy. But the claim, energy experts suggest, is largely “greenwashing” because most of Beijing’s electricity is imported from equally dirty plants outside the capital.

当本月北京关停最后一座燃煤电厂时，官方媒体宣称，饱受雾霾困扰的北京由此成为中国首个全部实现清洁能源发电的城市。但能源专家表示，这种断言大体上是在“漂绿”(greenwash)，因为北京大部分电力都输自京外污染同样严重的电厂。

The closure of the Huaneng Beijing Thermal Power Plant, which overlooks a swath of rusting warehouses, vehicle repair shops and a tangle of brick houses rented by migrant workers, was the final step in a multiyear plan for Beijing to shut its four remaining coal-fired plants and replace them with ones using natural gas, which produce about half the emissions.

华能北京热电厂(Huaneng Beijing Thermal Power Plant)周围是一片外观锈迹斑斑的仓库、各种修车店以及农民工租住的杂乱的砖房。按照前几年公布的一项计划，北京要陆续关停本市最后4座燃煤电厂，代之以排放约少一半的燃气热电厂，而关停华能燃煤热电厂就是这项计划的最后一步。

“As an ordinary labourer, I do not pay much attention to things like air and the environment,” says Feng Huawei, a construction worker who has lived near the base of the plant for four years. “But I think overall closing the plant is quite a good thing. It means less obvious pollution.”

“咱就是一个普通的干活的，不太关心空气、环境啥的，”在该电厂附近住了4年的建筑工人冯华伟(音)说，“但我觉得全关了是好事，污染就不会那么重了。”

Huaneng burnt 1.76m tonnes of coal a year, according to state media agency Xinhua, and taking it off the grid would help lower the city’s noxious sulphur dioxide and nitrogen oxide emissions.

中国官方通讯社新华社报道称，华能一年需要燃煤176万吨，将其关停将有助于降低北京市的有害二氧化硫、氮氧化物排放。

But 70 per cent of Beijing’s electricity is generated outside of the city, with the bulk coming from Shanxi province and Inner Mongolia via transmission lines running through neighbouring Hebei province. All three provinces have enormous coal-fired power generation capacity, and more than 60 per cent of Beijing’s electricity consumption still comes from coal, according to China’s National Energy Administration.

但北京市70%的电力来自外埠，其中大部分来自山西和内蒙古，通过经由河北的输电线输入北京。这3个省(自治区)都拥有庞大的煤电装机容量，而根据中国国家能源局的数据，北京用电量的逾60%仍来自燃煤发电。

That means closing Huaneng is only a partial solution, says Yang Fuqiang, a senior adviser on climate and energy at campaign group the Natural Resources Defense Council in Beijing. “Beijing still consumes about 10m tonnes of coal [a year]. We would like to see coal consumption cut more quickly and deeply.”

自然资源保护协会(NRDC)北京代表处的气候与能源问题高级顾问杨富强表示，这意味着关停华能只能解决部分问题。“北京(一年)仍要消耗约1000万吨煤。我们希望看到煤炭消耗量更快、更大幅的下降。”

Liansai Dong, a climate and energy campaigner at Greenpeace acknowledges that the fall in local emissions of harmful pollutants, including dust, sulphur dioxide and heavy metals could benefit Beijing’s residents. “However, it is quite a simplification of the problem to say Beijing is entirely relying on natural gas-fired power plants.”

绿色和平(Greenpeace)的气候与能源活动人士董连赛承认，本地有害污染物排放减少，包括粉尘、二氧化硫、重金属，对北京居民有好处。“但是，说北京全部依赖燃气热电厂，未免把问题太简单化了。”

Beijing faces a critical gap between energy supply and demand; the city’s 27 power plants have a total installed capacity of just over 11,000 megawatts, roughly half of what is required to meet its energy demands.

北京市的能源供给与需求之间存在着巨大缺口;全市27座电厂的总装机容量刚超过1.1万兆瓦，仅能满足本市约一半的能源需求。

As a result, Beijing imported 57bn kWh of energy from China’s coal-heavy north-east provinces in 2014, the last year for which numbers are available.

因此，根据可获得的最新数据，2014年，北京市从中国北方产煤大省输入的电量为570亿千瓦时。

That has experts worried that Beijing’s coal shutdowns are not reducing overall emissions.

令专家们担心的是，北京市关停燃煤电厂并不意味着排放总量下降。

“What we are most concerned with is this does not cut carbon dioxide emissions, because increased coal electricity production in other provinces also increases carbon dioxide emissions as a result,” says Mr Yang.

“我们最关注的是，这样做不能减少二氧化碳排放，因为其他省燃煤发电增加也会导致二氧化碳排放增加，”杨富强说。

Still, most environmentalists and energy policy experts praise the plant closure as a move in the right direction.

尽管如此，大多数环保主义者、能源政策专家都称赞北京市关停燃煤电厂是朝着正确方向迈出的一步。

“The closure of the city’s last coal-fired plant is significant because it is likely a harbinger of things to come for a far larger region that currently faces air quality issues, of which Beijing is only a part,” says Anders Hove, an associate research director at the at the University of Chicago’s Paulson Institute.

芝加哥大学(University of Chicago)保尔森研究所(Paulson Institute)副研究主管安德斯•霍夫(Anders Hove)表示：“北京市关停最后一座燃煤电厂意义重大，因为对目前面临空气质量问题的更广大地区——北京只是其中一部分——而言，这很可能是一个预示未来形势变化的先兆。”

Beijing has made significant efforts to increase the presence of renewable energy sources — wind, solar and hydropower — in its electricity generation mix. It has set a national target for the share of non-fossil fuel electricity to reach 30 per cent by 2020. Last April, energy regulators announced that China had suspended plans for about 200 coal-fired power generators, contributing to a global slump in coal demand.

中国已经采取了重大举措，力求提升风能、太阳能和水力等可再生能源在电力结构中所占的比重，其目标是到2020年非化石能源发电量的占比达到30%。去年4月，能源监管部门宣布，中国暂停了约200座燃煤电厂的建设计划，导致全球煤炭需求暴跌。

Yet the country has struggled to adapt its energy grid to new, renewable energy sources. China wasted 49.7bn kWh of solar and wind power-generated electricity in 2016, according to the China’s State Grid Corp, due to a phenomenon called curtailment, in which energy is not hooked up to the power grid for lack of transmission lines and grid capacity.

然而，中国的电网一直难以消纳新型可再生能源发电。根据中国国家电网(State Grid Corp)的数据，由于输电线路缺乏、电网容量不足导致无法并入电网而造成弃风和弃光，2016年，中国浪费了497亿千瓦时的太阳能和风能发电量。

Shanxi and Inner Mongolia, the two provinces on which Beijing relies heavily for electricity imports, waste the equivalent of as much as 30 per cent of the electricity they export to Beijing annually due to curtailment, according to Greenpeace.

北京严重依赖从山西和内蒙古输入电力，而根据绿色和平的数据，这两个省(自治区)因弃风限电每年浪费的电量相当于它们输至北京的电量的30%。

In February, China energy regulators halted all approvals of future wind energy projects in six provinces after discovering that a high number of wind farms were completely unconnected to the national grid and the energy they generated was sent nowhere.

今年2月，在发现大量风电场完全没有并入国家电网、所发电力无处可送之后，中国能源监管部门暂停了对6个省所有新风电项目的审批。

Near the Huaneng plant in Beijing, locals are philosophical about such policy dilemmas. “The plant does seem to have stopped emitting smoke,” says Jin Le, who works in storage facility nearby the power station. “I did not even notice until now, because the Beijing government stops the plant from operating during big [government] meetings. But they have not torn down the plant. They could resume operating it any time.”

华能北京热电厂周边的居民对这种政策困境泰然处之。“那个厂似乎确实不冒烟了，”在电厂附近一处仓储设施工作的金勒(音)说，“我到现在才注意到，因为北京市政府在重大(政府)会议期间就让电厂停工。但是他们没把电厂拆掉。他们可以随时让它复工。”