2021年经济学人 绿色投资繁荣下的世界隐忧(2)

（单词翻译）

This sudden shift in how resources are allocated¹ is causing stresses and strains as demand surges for raw materials and a scramble² occurs for the few projects with regulatory approval. We calculate that the price of a basket of five minerals used in electric cars and power grids³ has soared by 139% in the past year. Timber mafias are roaming Ecuadorean forests to find balsa wood used in wind-turbine blades. In February a British auction⁴ of sea-bed rights for offshore⁵ wind farms brought in up to $12bn because energy firms rushed to get exposure whatever the cost. The shortages extend to finance: as a mass of money chases a few renewable-energy firms, valuations have been stretched into bubbly territory. Although the weight of the renewable-energy industry in consumer-price indices is still small, some financiers fear that supply shortages over years could eventually fuel higher inflation.

由于原材料需求激增，获得监管批准的项目稀少而出现了争夺，这种资源分配方式的突然转变正引起压力和紧迫感。我们计算，在过去一年，用于制造电动汽车和电网的一组五种矿物的价格已经飙升了139%。木材集团正在厄瓜多尔的森林里找寻用于制造风力涡轮机叶片的轻木。今年2月，英国的一场海上风电场的海床权拍卖会带来了高达120亿美元的收益，因为能源公司不惜一切代价地急于获得曝光。短缺扩展到金融领域：随着大量资金追逐少数可再生能源公司，估值已经延伸到泡沫化领域。尽管可再生能源行业在消费价格指数中的比重仍然很小，但一些金融机构担心，多年来的供应短缺最终可能会加剧通胀。

What makes these signs of overstretch so striking is that they are materialising even as the energy transition is less than 10% complete (measured by the share of cumulative⁶ energy-investment needed by 2050 that has already taken place). It is true that some of the technologies which will be required barely exist yet and so are not available for investment. That is why so much research and development is needed. But in other areas the brain work has largely been done—so the 2020s must be the decade of brawn⁷, ramping⁸ up established technologies with massive capital spending.

这些过度扩张的迹象之所以如此引人注目，是因为即使能源转型的完成率不到10%（以2050年所需累计能源投资中已投入的份额来衡量），它们仍在实现。确实，一些必需技术几乎还不存在，因此无法进行投资。这就是需要开展大量研究和开发工作的原因。但在其他领域，脑力工作基本上已经完成，因此20世纪20年代肯定是耗费体力的十年，用大量的资本支出来提升现有技术。