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The exponential growth of solar power will change the world
太阳能的指数增长将改变世界
An energy-rich future is within reach
能源极大丰富的未来近在咫尺
June 20th 2024
It is 70 yearssince AT&T’s Bell Labs unveiled a new technology for turning sunlight into power. The phone company hoped it could replace the batteries that run equipment in out-of-the-way places. It also realised that powering devices with light alone showed how science could make the future seem wonderful; hence a press event at which sunshine kept a toy Ferris wheel spinning round and round.
现在距离AT&T贝尔实验室推出光电转化技术已经70年了。AT&T希望这项技术能代替那些偏远地区设备所用的电池。该公司也意识到，仅凭光能驱动设备就可以展示出科学让未来美好；因此在一场新闻发布会上，出现了光能让玩具摩天轮不停地转动的场景。
Todaysolar power is long past the toy phase. Panels now occupy an area around half that of Wales, and this year they will provide the world with about 6% of its electricity—which is almost three times as much electrical energy as America consumed back in 1954. Yet this historic growth is only the second-most-remarkable thing about the rise of solar power. The most remarkable is that it is nowhere near over.
如今，太阳能已经远远不再是玩具。太阳能电池板占据了威尔士面积的大约一半，今年太阳能将为世界提供约6%的电力——几乎是1954年美国消耗电能总额的三倍。然而，这一历史性增长在太阳能兴起中并非最值得注意的事情。最显著的是，太阳能的增长远未结束。
To call solar power’s rise exponential is not hyperbole, but a statement of fact. Installed solar capacity doubles roughly every three years, and so grows ten-fold each decade. Such sustained growth is seldom seen in anything that matters. That makes it hard for people to get their heads round what is going on. When it was a tenth of its current size ten years ago, solar power was still seen as marginal even by experts who knew how fast it had grown. The next ten-fold increase will be equivalent to multiplying the world’s entire fleet of nuclear reactors by eight in less than the time it typically takes to build just a single one of them.
太阳能呈指数增长这一点并非夸张之词，而是事实陈述。太阳能装机容量大约每三年翻一番，每十年增长十倍。这样的持续增长在任何重要领域中都很少见。因此，人们很难理解正在发生的事情。十年前，太阳能规模是现在的十分之一，即使是知道太阳能飞速增长的专家，也认为太阳能仍非主流。下一个十倍增长相当于在建造一座寻常的核反应堆的时间内，将全球整个核反应堆的数量增加八倍。
Solar cells will in all likelihood be the single biggest source of electrical power on the planet by the mid 2030s. By the 2040s they may be the largest source not just of electricity but of all energy. On current trends, the all-in cost of the electricity they produce promises to be less than half as expensive as the cheapest available today. This will not stop climate change, but could slow it a lot faster. Much of the world—includingAfrica, where 600m people still cannot light their homes—will begin to feel energy-rich. That feeling will be a new and transformational one for humankind.
到2030年代中期，太阳能电池极有可能成为地球上最大的单一电力来源。到2040年代，太阳能可能不仅仅是电力的最大来源，而是所有能源的最大来源。按照当前趋势，太阳能电力的全面成本预计将仅为今天最便宜的电力成本的一半以下。这不会阻止气候变化，但可能会更快地减缓气候变化。当前非洲仍有大约6亿人无法用电照明，包括非洲的世界许多地方将因太阳能而感受到能源的丰富。这对人类来说将是一种新的、变革性的体验。
To grasp that this is not some environmentalist fever dream, consider solar economics. As the cumulative production of a manufactured good increases, costs go down. As costs go down, demand goes up. As demand goes up, production increases—and costs go down further. This cannot go on for ever; production, demand or both always become constrained. In earlier energy transitions—from wood to coal, coal to oil or oil to gas—the efficiency of extraction grew, but it was eventually offset by the cost of finding ever more fuel.
这不是某种环保主义者的幻想，你可以了解一下太阳能经济学。随着产品生产的不断增加，成本会降低；成本降低后，需求会增加；需求增加后，生产会增加，并导致成本进一步降低。不可能一直如此循环往复；生产、需求或是两者总有一天会受到限制。在从木材到煤炭、从煤炭到石油或从石油到天然气的早期能源转型中，开采效率逐步增加，但最终被寻找更多燃料的成本抵消。
As our essay this week explains, solar power faces no such constraint. The resources needed to produce solar cells and plant them on solar farms are silicon-rich sand, sunny places and human ingenuity, all three of which are abundant. Making cells also takes energy, but solar power is fast making that abundant, too. As for demand, it is both huge and elastic—if you make electricity cheaper, people will find uses for it. The result is that, in contrast to earlier energy sources, solar power has routinely become cheaper and will continue to do so.
正如本周刊文所解释的那样，太阳能电力没有这种限制。生产太阳能电池和建设太阳能农场所需的资源是含硅的沙子、阳光充足的区域和人类的智慧，这三者都非常丰富，没有限制。制造电池也需要能源，但太阳能电力正使能源迅速变得丰富起来。至于太阳能电力的需求，则是巨大而有弹性——降低电力价格，就能找到新的用途。最终的结果是，与早期能源来源相比，太阳能电力通常会更便宜，并将继续降价。
Other constraints do exist. Given people’sproclivity for living outside daylight hours, solar power needs to be complemented with storage and supplemented by other technologies. Heavy industry and aviation and freight have been hard to electrify. Fortunately, these problems may be solved as batteries and fuels created by electrolysisgradually become cheaper.
不过仍然存在其他限制。鉴于人们倾向于在白昼之外的时间生活，太阳能需要作为补充的储能和其他技术。重工业、航空和货运难以电气化。幸运的是，随着电解产生的电池和燃料慢慢变得更加便宜，这些问题可能会得到解决。
Almost all the purified silicon from which they are made come from China. Its solar industry is highly competitive, and outstripping current demand—quite an achievement given all the solar capacityChina is installing within its own borders. This means that Chinese capacity is big enough to keep the expansion going for years to come, even if some of the companies involved go to the wall and some investment dries up.
几乎所有用于太阳能电池制造的纯化硅都来自中国。中国太阳能产业竞争力很强，当前已经超过了需求——考虑到中国国内的太阳能装机容量，这是一个相当了不起的成就。这意味着中国的太阳能产能足够该国的太阳能产业在未来几年内继续扩展。即使一些公司倒闭，一些投资退出，影响也不会太大。
As almost all the demand for solar panels still lies in the future, the rest of the world will have plenty of scope to get into the market. America’s adoption of solar energy could be frustrated by a pro-fossil-fuel policy, but only temporarily and painfully. It could equally be enhanced if America released pent up demand, by making it easier to install panels on homes and to join the grid—the country has a terawatt of new solar capacity waiting to be connected. Carbon prices would help, just as they did in the switch from coal to gas in the European Union.
几乎所有太阳能电池板的需求仍然在未来，世界其他国家和地区将有充足的机会进入这个市场。美国采用太阳能能源可能会受到亲化石燃料政策的阻碍，但这是暂时的痛苦。如果美国释放被压抑的需求，安装太阳能电池板和接入电网会变得更加容易，那么美国太阳能产业将同样得到提升——美国将新增一太瓦的新增太阳能容量。碳的价格会起到帮助作用，就像当年欧盟从煤炭转向天然气时那样。
The aim should be for the virtuous circle of solar-power production to turn as fast as possible. That is because it offers the prize of cheaper energy. The benefits start with a boost to productivity. Anything that people use energy for today will cost less—and that includes pretty much everything. Then come the things cheap energy will make possible. People who could never afford to will start lighting their houses or driving a car. Cheap energy can purify water, and even desalinateit. It can drive the hungry machinery of artificial intelligence. It can make billions of homes and offices more bearable in summers that will, for decades to come, be getting hotter.
人类的目标应该是让太阳能生产尽快实现良性循环。这是因为太阳能让能源变得更便宜了。太阳能的好处将开始于生产力的提升。今天，使用能源的任何事物的成本都会降低——这实际上包括世界上几乎所有事物。接着是廉价能源就能运转的事物。那些过去无法负担电力的人们将能够在家中用电照明，驾驶汽车。廉价能源可以净化水，甚至淡化海水；可以驱动人工智能机器。在未来几十年中，夏天将会变得更加炎热，廉价能源将可以让数十亿家庭和办公室变得更加宜居。
But it is the things that nobody has yet thought of that will be most consequential. In its radical abundance, cheaper energy will free the imagination, setting tiny Ferris wheels of the mind spinning with excitement and new possibilities.
然而，最具影响力的是那些至今仍未出现的事物。有了快速丰富的太阳能电力，廉价能源将释放人们的想象力，这种兴奋和新的可能性将让人们心中的微小摩天轮开始旋转。
This week marks the summer solstice in the northern hemisphere. The Sun rising to its highest point in the sky will in decades to come shine down on a world where nobody need go without the blessings of electricity and where the access to energy invigorates all those it touches.■
本周（文章发表时间）就是北半球的夏至。升到最高点的太阳在未来几十年将照亮整个世界，不会再有人缺电，而随处可得的能源将鼓舞所有人。
