应对气候变化的新机遇

 Low rates provide a historic opportunity to tackle climate change

低利率为应对气候变化带来机遇

库珀：应对气候危机需要巨额投资，低利率为此提供了历史机遇。现在投资的企业可以抢占先机，获得竞争对手难以打败的优势。

更新于2019年12月30日 03:31 天达资产管理公司投资组合经理 戴尔德丽•库珀 为英国《金融时报》撰稿

Tackling the climate crisis will require the world’s largest ever peacetime investment. Historically low interest rates mean there has never been a better time to make it.

应对气候危机需要有史以来全球规模最大的和平时期投资。利率处于历史低位意味着，现在是投资的最好时机。

Interest rates affect the entire economy, but are particularly important for renewables because the cost of borrowing has an outsized influence on their competitiveness. Fuel costs are essentially zero for green power — sun, wind and water are free. That means capital expenditure is the biggest component of the average cost of producing renewable electricity.

利率会影响整体经济，但对可再生能源尤为重要，因为借款成本对它们的竞争力影响巨大。绿色能源的燃料成本基本为零，太阳能、风能和水力可免费获取。这意味着资本支出是可再生能源发电平均成本的最大组成部分。

In other words, renewables’ costs tend to be front-loaded, requiring upfront borrowing, and they deliver savings over time. The same is true of many technologies we need to reduce global emissions. It costs more to build well-insulated houses, but less to run them. It is just the same for efficient appliances and electric vehicles.

换句话说，可再生能源的成本往往提前支付，需要预先借款，假以时日，它们会实现节约。我们为减少全球排放所需要的很多技术也是如此。建造隔热良好的房屋成本较高，但运营起来的成本较低。节能电器和电动汽车也是如此。

Green technologies are becoming cheaper as they mature and reach scale. Coupled with ultra-low or negative long-term interest rates in developed economies, the cost advantage of renewables is startling. Portugal recently ran an auction for industrial-scale solar that settled at $17 per MWh. That is clean power at a third of the cost of its fossil-fuel equivalent.

随着环保技术的成熟和规模化，它们的成本正在下降。再加上发达经济体超低或为负的长期利率，可再生能源的成本优势是惊人的。葡萄牙最近举办了一场工业规模太阳能的拍卖，成交价为每兆瓦时17美元。这相当于化石燃料能源价格的三分之一。

So why has investment in renewables not grown anywhere near the pace required to achieve the Paris agreement — which focused on an international pledge to keep global warming well below 2C above pre-industrial levels — as the UN’s recent Emissions Gap report makes plain?

联合国最近发布的《排放差距报告》(Emissions Gap)清楚表明，可再生能源投资的增速远不及落实《巴黎气候协定》所需的水平，为何会这样？该协定的重点是一项国际承诺，即把全球平均气温较工业化前水平的升幅控制在远低于2摄氏度。

The answer is partly that cheap money has kept debt-laden oil and gas producers on life support. According to McKinsey, free cash flow per barrel of oil from US independent producers has been negative for the past eight years. Taking on more debt has so far masked the problem, but this cannot go on forever.

部分原因在于，廉价资金让负债累累的油气生产商得以存活。麦肯锡(McKinsey)表示，过去8年，美国独立生产商每桶石油的自由现金流一直为负。举更多债到目前为止掩盖了这个问题，但这种情况不可能永远持续下去。

So what is going wrong for renewables? Recent stumbles for solar in big markets such as India — where new installations fell more than a third in the first half of 2019 compared with the same period in 2018 — demonstrate that uncertainty about regulatory and fiscal policy acts as a brake on investment.

那么，可再生能源到底出了什么问题？最近，太阳能在印度等大型市场遭遇挫折（与2018年同期相比，2019年上半年，印度新增装机容量减少逾三分之一），表明监管和财政政策的不确定性阻碍了投资。

The biggest reason is paralysis among institutional investors. Those most concerned about their fiscal duty to prepare for climate-related risks have focused largely on divestment.

最重要的原因是机构投资者陷于瘫痪。那些对自己的财政责任（为气候相关风险做好准备）最为担心的机构投资者，主要关注的是撤资。

But avoiding oil stocks has not put a penny towards the massive structural changes we need to make to the economy, and it has patently failed to spur companies to climate-proof their products and operations.

然而，规避石油类股的做法丝毫没有促进我们所需要对经济做出的大规模结构性改革，而且它显然也未能促使企业在产品和业务经营上做到不对气候造成影响。

Divesting may not be helping investors mitigate climate risk to the portfolio returns either. The S&P 500 Carbon Efficient Index, which favours constituents with lower carbon emissions per unit of revenue, has mirrored the main S&P 500 equity benchmark almost exactly over the past 10 years.

撤资可能也没有帮助投资者减轻投资组合回报的气候风险。标普500碳效率指数(S&P 500 Carbon Efficient Index)青睐那些单位收入碳排放较低的成分股，过去10年，该指数的表现几乎与标普500指数完全一样。

That either means carbon risk makes no difference to returns, or that low-carbon indices are not actually helping investors reduce their climate risk exposure. There is a growing volume of academic research demonstrating a substantial relationship between carbon risk and market returns. The only logical conclusion, then, is that carbon reporting — at least the kind used by the big indices — is failing to capture the true nature of climate-risk exposure.

这要么意味着碳风险不会对收益产生影响，要么意味着低碳指数实际上并没有帮助投资者减少他们的气候风险敞口。越来越多的学术研究表明碳风险与市场回报之间存在着重大关系。因此唯一合乎逻辑的结论是：碳报告——至少是这些大指数所使用的报告——未能抓住气候风险敞口的本质。

As alarm mounts over missed emissions targets, the focus on divestment is starting to be replaced by recognition of the need to invest positively. Yes, that is due to sustainability concerns, but it is also about tapping into what must become fast-growing parts of the global economy.

随着未达到排放目标的报警加大，人们也从关注撤资转变为认识到需要积极投资。是的，这是出于对可持续发展的担忧，但这也关系到进入必将成为全球经济中快速增长的部分的领域。

According to the UN, yearly spending of $2.4tn to 2035 is required to keep global temperature rises to safe levels. Governments have a role to play, but the main channel of funding will have to be from the capital markets, both public and private.

据联合国，要让全球气温上升维持在安全水平，至2035年每年需要支出2.4万亿美元。各国政府要发挥作用，但主要筹资渠道必须来自资本市场，包括公共和私人市场。

The energy transition will entail far-reaching changes not only to the energy system itself, but to transport, manufacturing, construction, agriculture and much else besides.

能源转型不仅需要能源系统本身的深刻变革，还需要运输、制造、建筑、农业以及其他许多行业的深刻变革。

This will require capital expenditure and innovation by companies across industries engaged in everything from extracting raw materials to providing software and services.

这将需要各行各业——从原料提取到软件及服务供应——的企业进行资本支出和创新。

For investors the opportunities are substantial, but so are the risks. We are already seeing that the energy transition will be disruptive, rendering individual companies, business models and even entire sectors obsolete. To take just one example, the automotive sector is in a scramble to reinvent itself, and it is far from clear which technologies and businesses will survive.

对于投资者而言，机遇是巨大的，但风险也同样巨大。我们已经预见能源转型将带来颠覆性影响，某些企业、商业模式、甚至整个行业都会被淘汰。仅举一个例子，汽车行业正在仓促地自我改造，而哪些技术和企业能最终存活还远不清楚。

The task for investors is twofold: to identify companies with the technologies, business models and competitive advantages to thrive in the energy transition, and to ensure that management teams are sufficiently focused on the need to spend now to ensure their businesses survive in a low-carbon future.

投资者的任务是双重的：一方面要识别出那些拥有技术、商业模式和竞争优势，能够在能源转型中蓬勃发展的企业，另一方面要确保管理团队充分关注现在投资的必要，确保企业能在低碳未来中存活。

The trajectory of interest rates will be an important determinant of which businesses survive the energy transition and emerge dominant. Those that take advantage of the low-rate environment to lock in investment now can steal a march on their rivals that will be hard to overcome.

利率走势将是一个重要决定因素，它将决定哪些企业可以在能源转型中存活下来，并占据主导地位。那些利用低利率环境现在锁定投资的企业，可以抢占先机，获得竞争对手难以打败的优势。