本文转自《QUARTZ》发表的题为“Why we’d all love Donald Trump’s “clean coal,” and why we can’t have it”的报道。

作者：Cassie Werber

日期：2016.10.11

原文链接：https://qz.com/806040/why-wed-all-love-donald-trumps-clean-coal-but-carbon-capture-and-storage-doesnt-ensure-it/

“There is a thing called clean coal. Coal will last for a thousand years in this country,” said Donald Trump, the US Republican presidential candidate, at the debate on Oct. 9. Trump had been asked how to meet the country’s energy needs while protecting jobs in the sector. But what is ”clean coal,” and what role does it have in the future energy mix?

“有一种叫清洁煤的东西。 美国共和党总统候选人唐纳德·特朗普在10月9日的辩论中表示，煤炭将在这个国家持续一千年。特朗普被问及如何在保护该部门就业的同时满足该国的能源需求。 但什么是“洁净煤”，它在未来能源结构中扮演什么角色？

Firstly, so-called “clean” coal is not a thing, it’s a process.

首先，所谓的“清洁”煤不是一个物品，它是一个过程。

Coal is the most polluting form of fossil fuel, but it can be burned in such a way that the carbon dioxide it releases doesn’t enter the atmosphere. That process is called carbon capture and storage, or CCS. Coal is abundant, it’s cheap, and there are both workers and whole societies that rely on it. So there’s an incentive to use CCS, both to keep jobs going and to limit the environmental damage from coal plants that already exist.

煤是污染最严重的化石燃料，但它的燃烧方式可以使其释放的二氧化碳不进入大气。该过程称为碳捕集与封存，或CCS。 煤炭资源丰富，价格便宜，工人和整个社会都依赖煤炭。 因此，有动力使用CCS，既可以保持就业，也可以限制已经存在的燃煤电厂对环境的破坏。

The problem: cost.

问题：成本

There are three main ways of going about CCS. The first ”scrubs” the carbon dioxide from the emissions of coal plants, pumps it away, and sequesters it underground. The second uses a chemical process to remove CO2 from the coal first, and turn the fuel into a synthetic gas, which is then burned in a turbine. The third burns the coal using nearly pure oxygen instead of regular air, which is four-fifths nitrogen. Without the nitrogen, burning produces less total gas—making it easier to compress and purify—and much less nitrous oxide, another greenhouse gas.

关于CCS有三种主要方式。 第一个“擦洗”燃煤电厂排放的二氧化碳，将其抽走，并将其隔离在地下。 第二种方法是先使用化学工艺从煤中除去二氧化碳，然后将燃料转化为合成气，然后在汽轮机中燃烧。 第三种是使用几乎纯净的氧气而不是常规空气燃烧煤炭（五分之四的氮气）。 如果没有氮气，燃烧产生的气体总量就会减少，从而更容易压缩和净化，更不用说氧化亚氮，这是另一种温室气体。

All three processes are expensive, and the coal industry is poor. Coal prices have been falling for years, in part because of environmental regulation, but mainly because of the rise of alternatives.

这三个过程都很昂贵，煤炭行业也很差。 煤炭价格多年来一直在下降，部分原因是环境监管，但主要是因为替代品的增加。

During the debate, Trump went on to say: ”Now we have natural gas and so many other things because of technology…Over the last seven years we have found tremendous wealth right under our feet.” Indeed—and that’s the main reason for coal’s decline. The development of shale gas extraction technology has given the US abundant gas supplies. It no longer needs to buy, mine, or burn so much coal. Coal prices have slumped worldwide as a result.

在辩论中，特朗普继续说：“现在我们有天然气和许多其他东西因为技术......在过去的七年中，我们已经找到了巨大的财富。”的确 - 这就是煤炭下降的主要原因 。 页岩气开采技术的发展为美国提供了充足的天然气供应。 它不再需要购买、开采或燃烧如此多的煤炭。 因此，全球煤炭价格下跌。

The coal industry is in a bind. It can’t pass on the cost of retrofitting plants with CCS technology to customers without hiking prices. But it also can’t justify—or raise the money for—such huge projects on the back of its ailing business.

煤炭行业陷入困境。 它不能在不提高价格的情况下，将采用CCS技术的工厂改造成本转接给客户。 但它也无法在其陷入困境的业务背后为这样庞大的项目辩护或筹集资金。

CCS has been called both an environmental savior, and a monumental distraction from newer technologies which don’t involve producing carbon in the first place. Wind and solar are also expensive compared to fossil fuels, but their costs are coming down.

CCS既被称为环境救星，又极大地分散了人们对新技术的注意力，因为新技术一开始并不涉及碳排放。与化石燃料相比，风能和太阳能也很昂贵，但它们的成本正在下降。

The same can’t be said for CCS. McKinsey, a global consultancy firm, looked back last year at some energy market predictions it made in 2007. In the 2015 report, it wrote, “we were too bullish on carbon capture and storage (CCS), a way to make the burning of coal much cleaner. High costs and technical difficulties have slowed adoption. Today, only 13 CCS projects are in operation, and others have been canceled or delayed—4 in 2013 alone.”

对于CCS来说也是如此。 全球咨询公司麦肯锡（McKinsey）去年回顾了2007年的一些能源市场预测。在2015年的报告中，它写道，“我们过于看好碳捕获和存储（CCS），这种技术可以使煤炭燃烧变得更加清洁。 高成本和技术困难减缓了采用率。 今天，只有13个CCS项目在运作，其他项目已被取消或延迟 - 仅2013年就有4个。“

Goldman Sachs also said that CCS was stalling. In a 2014 report (pdf) the bank predicted that only one thousandth of global installed coal capacity will be fitted with CCS by 2020.

Goldman Sachs 还表示，CCS正在停滞不前。 在2014年的一份报告（pdf）中预测，到2020年，全球煤炭装机容量中只有千分之一将装配CCS。

If carbon capture and storage worked, it would be brilliant for lots of reasons—helping the millions of people globally who still don’t have electricity, while mitigating the harm done by the mountains of coal still being burned worldwide.

如果碳捕获和储存能够发挥作用，这将是非常明智的——帮助全球数百万仍没有电的人，同时减轻全球仍在燃烧的堆积如山的煤炭所造成的危害。

This year, one Texas plant which uses the technique of scrubbing and then burying CO2 will open. But another flagship project in Mississippi has seen its budget balloon from $1.8 billion to $6.2 billion and, long overdue, still isn’t finished. ”Clean” coal technology might be a piece of the energy jigsaw, but a magic bullet it ain’t.

今年，德克萨斯州的一家工厂将开放使用洗涤技术然后再埋藏二氧化碳。 但是，密西西比州的另一个旗舰项目的预算却从18亿美元增加到62亿美元，而且早就应该还没有结束。 “清洁”煤炭技术可能是能源拼图的一部分，但它不是一个神奇的子弹。