什么？美国又撒钱了？（内附ChatGPT写的感想） | 经济学人商业

2023-02-26 01:02

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听力|精读|翻译|词组

Business | Shock therapy

商业 | 极端补贴政策

英文部分选自经济学人20230218商业版块

Business | Shock therapy

商业 | 极端补贴政策

What European business makes of the green-subsidy race

欧洲企业如何看待当前的绿色补贴竞赛

A lesson from America’s Inflation Reduction Act is that size isn’t everything

美国的《通胀削减法案》告诉我们：补贴规模并不等于一切

Last summer European leaders began hearing a huge sucking sound. The source of the din? The Inflation Reduction Act (ira), a 725-page doorstopper of legislation passed in August to speed up American decarbonisation. Europe’s budding clean-tech industry, they feared, would be hoovered up across the Atlantic by the promise of handouts, which amount to around $400bn over ten years. To stop this from happening, some eu politicians argued, the bloc would have at the very least to match the ira’s sums.

去年夏天，巨大的“抽吸”声传入欧洲各国领导人的耳中，这个声音来自何方呢？其源头是美国于去年八月通过的《通胀削减法案》（IRA），这部725页的大部头法律文件旨在加速美国的脱碳进程。这些领导人担心欧洲清洁技术产业刚刚兴起的发展势头会被美国的大手笔补贴吸引过去，这笔补贴将在未来十年达到约4000亿美元之巨。一些欧盟政客表示，为了阻止这一情况发生，至少要给予与IRA相当的补贴。

So far the noise has turned out to be mostly in the politicians’ heads. Worries about a green exodus, bordering on panic in some quarters, have subsided. When the continent’s heads of government gathered for a summit last week in Brussels, they did not shower billions of euros more on the eu’s greening efforts—which are already, it turns out, comparable to the ira in their generosity. Nor did they (for the time being) further water down rules against state aid to favoured businesses, which would have given freer rein to member states keen to splurge. Instead, they focused on making the system for doling out this money more efficient.

目前为止，这一切仍只是政客们的臆想。他们对环保企业“集体出走”的担忧（甚至一些人为此感到恐慌）已经开始逐渐减弱。上周欧盟领导人在布鲁塞尔开会时并未宣布增资数十亿欧元来支持欧洲大陆的绿色项目，实际上从数量上讲，当前的财政补贴已经能和IRA媲美了。领导人（暂时）也并未进一步放松限制国家补贴流向受优待企业的规定，而此举原本可以让成员国有更大的自由度来发放补贴。恰恰相反，他们将精力放在增强补贴机制的效率上。

In the eyes of its European fans, the beauty of the IRA is less its size than its simplicity. Rules are the same all over America. Getting tax credits, grants or soft loans will be straightforward provided a firm meets certain criteria, such as investing in one of the targeted sectors. The law sets aside sums for specific technologies, which can create markets, such as solar energy, carbon capture and storage and “green” hydrogen, made from renewable power (see chart). Producers of such hydrogen, for example, can get tax credits of up to $3 per kilogram of the gas.

在其欧洲粉丝眼里，IRA的优点与其说是规模庞大，不如说是简单直接。全美采用相同的规则，只要企业满足某些标准（如在目标行业投资），就能获得税收抵免、拨款或软贷款等。该项法律为某些可以创造新市场的科学技术留出了专项资金，如太阳能、碳捕集与封存技术以及可再生能源制氢（绿氢）等。以绿氢的生产企业为例，它们最高可以获得每千克气体3美元的税收优惠。

Replicating this set-up exactly would be unthinkable in Europe. The eu may see itself as an ever-closer union, but taxes are still a national affair, which rules out continent-wide tax incentives. If member states want to institute their own credits, or other forms of subsidies, they typically need the approval of the European Commission in Brussels, whose job it is to ensure a level playing field in the eu’s single market. To the resulting cacophony of national schemes, the eu has in recent years added a few bloc-wide grant programmes, such as Investeu and Innovation Fund, to support clean tech.

把美国那套照搬到欧洲是难以想象的。欧盟自视为一个日益紧密的联盟，但是税收仍然是各国的内务，那么在整个欧洲大陆施行税收优惠便不太可能。如果成员国想要制定自己的信贷措施，或者其它形式的补贴，它们通常需要经由布鲁塞尔欧盟委员会审批，该机构的职责便是保证欧盟单一市场内部的公平竞争。为应对各国推行不同方案所造成的混乱，欧盟近几年增加了一些全欧盟范围内的资助项目，比如投资欧洲计划（Investeu）和创新基金（Innovation Fund），以支持清洁技术。

The upshot is ear-splitting, particularly for smaller green-tech firms in need of funds to scale up their projects, says Craig Douglas of World Fund, a venture-capital firm, who has a long experience in dealing with the eu’s subsidy bureaucracy. To have a chance at tapping one of the many pots, startups often have to hire pricey consultancies to help them write grant proposals. “We would need at least four people full-time to figure this out,” explains Vaitea Cowan, co-founder of Enapter, a maker of electrolysers, machines that produce hydrogen.

风投公司世界基金（World Fund）的克雷格·道格拉斯（Craig Douglas）具有长期与欧盟负责政府补贴的官员打交道的经验，他表示这个结果令人震惊，对那些需要资金支持以扩大项目的小规模绿色科技公司而言更是如此。为了能从众多支持项目中获得补贴机会，初创企业经常不得不高价聘请顾问来帮助他们撰写补助申请。“我们至少需要四名全职人员来搞定它。”电解槽（制氢设备）制造商Enapter的联合创始人瓦伊塔·考恩（Vaitea Cowan）如此解释道。

Once an application is filed, it often takes months, if not years, before a decision is made. In the case of Plastic Energy, which recycles plastic waste, it once took so long that “we had to file again because the delay made us miss a deadline”, reports Carlos Monreal, the firm’s chief executive. And decisions tend to come without explanation. “It’s a black box. There should be a dialogue,” says Henrik Henriksson, boss of h2 Green Steel, which is erecting a steel mill in northern Sweden that is powered by green hydrogen. The eu’s green subsidies are also often poorly targeted. Jules Besnainou of Cleantech for Europe, a lobby group, points out that most of the European money does not go to the continent’s startups, which tend to be more innovative, but to big established firms, which do not always need government support.

申请提出后，审批周期即使没有几年，往往也需要数月。以回收塑料垃圾的英国塑料能源公司（Plastic Energy）为例，该公司首席执行官卡洛斯·蒙雷亚尔（Carlos Monreal）表示，曾经出现过等待时间太长，以至于“错过了最后期限，不得不再次提出申请”的情况。而且往往不对审批结果作任何解释。H2 Green Steel公司正在瑞典北部建造一座由绿色氢提供动力的钢厂。公司老板亨里克·亨里克森（Henrik Henriksson）表示：“这就是一个黑箱操作。应该针对审批申请进行对话和沟通。”欧盟的绿色补贴也往往缺乏针对性。来自游说团体“欧洲清洁技术”的朱尔斯·贝奈努（Jules Besnainou）指出，大部分欧盟资金并未流向欧洲大陆颇具创新性的初创企业，而是流向了不总是需要政府支持的大型知名企业。

The commission’s draft “Green Deal Industrial Plan”, unveiled on February 1st, tries to deal with these shortcomings. The plan is meant to simplify the eu programmes and streamline the approval of national green-finance tools in Brussels. It proposes an “administratively light” auction, the winners of which will receive a premium, based on their bids, for each kilogram of renewable hydrogen produced over ten years. The scheme will offer incentive to the tune of €800m ($860m). The ira has clearly shocked the eu into thinking harder about its green subsidies, says Jeromin Zettelmeyer, who heads Bruegel, a think-tank in Brussels.

在2月1日公布的“绿色协议产业计划”草案中，欧盟委员会试图解决这些问题。该计划旨在简化欧盟方案，并提高欧盟国家绿色金融工具的审批效率。“绿色协议产业计划”建议推行“轻行政”竞拍，中标者可根据出价,为十年内生产的每公斤可再生氢获得一笔溢价。此激励方案将会提供高达8亿欧元（8.6亿美元）的资金。布鲁塞尔智库Bruegel负责人杰罗明·泽特尔迈耶（Jeromin Zettelmeyer）说，《通胀削减法案》着实令欧盟震惊，迫使其仔细思考如何制订自己的绿色补贴方案。

That may be so. Still, those who have read the eight pages dedicated to “speeding up access to finance”, which mention no fewer than a dozen different acronym-rich programmes, may be excused for not holding their breath. Claudio Spadacini, ceo of Energy Dome, an Italian firm which uses liquid carbon-dioxide to store energy, approves of the eu’s moves but still hopes to take advantage of the ira. Ms Cowan of Enapter, whose firm has just built a factory in Germany, is getting lots of calls from American state governments since the ira was passed. “They are rolling out the red carpet,” she says. Whoosh.

也许现实就是这样。尽管如此，那些读过“绿色协议产业计划”中8页专门介绍“加快获取资金”的人，对此计划兴致索然也许也情有可原：这8页提到的十几个方案充斥着各种首字母缩略词。Energy Dome是一家意大利液态二氧化碳储能技术提供商，该公司首席执行官克劳迪奥·斯帕达奇尼（Claudio Spadacini）对欧盟的举措表示赞同，但他仍希望能抓住《通胀削减法案》提供的机会。Enapter公司刚刚在德国建立了一家工厂。自《通胀削减法案》通过以来，这家公司的考恩女士收到了美国各州政府的电话轰炸。她说，“他们就等着列队欢迎我们了。”嘶——

翻译组：

Leon，驻外民工，经济学人读者

Collin，男，崇拜科比的一枚小翻译

Forest，爱树的人，精神小花园持续耕耘中

校对组：

Very，男，电气民工，经济学人资浅爱好者

Harold，奔波中追寻星空ing，分无义乐真谛

Yuqing，女，理想主义体验派，经济学人读者

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本周感想

Xenia，想寻找热情，还有一些答案

对有些神叨叨的我来说，在ChatGPT霸榜全球的时候分到了感想的任务，必须认为这是冥冥之中老天的暗示——让我试试ChatGPT。于是花了俩小时，在小伙伴的帮助下，开了账号请它写了写感想。看下来我的评价是，它没有想象中聪明，机器人感还是很重的，但是确实“听得懂”问题，理解文化，语言表述也完全顺畅，甚至比一些中文平平的人优秀不少。在这个不确定的年代发布这种变革性的技术，生存危机一把，希望AI在超越9岁的智力以后，可以保持善良，可以爱这个充满了不完美的物种——人类。