标题: [转帖] 【2014.03.08】Clean technology in China 中国清洁技术 [打印本页] 作者: showcraft 时间: 2014-4-17 07:20 标题: 【2014.03.08】Clean technology in China 中国清洁技术
http://www.ecocn.org/thread-197641-1-1.html
Clean technology in China
中国清洁技术
Red light, green light
红灯绿灯
China’s anti-pollution drive will make it a good place for clean-energy firms
中国的治污决心使之成为清洁能源公司的好去处
Mar 8th 2014 | SHANGHAI | From the print edition
1 “ENVIRONMENTAL pollution has become a major problem, which is nature’s red-light warning.” Those green-tinged words do not come from an activist. Rather, they come from China’s leaders, who gathered this week in Beijing for a big annual meeting. On March 5th Li Keqiang, the prime minister, vowed to declare war on pollution.
2 The timing could not have been better, then, for the launch of a firm devoted to the manufacture of greener engines. The same day EcoMotors, a startup backed by Bill Gates and Khosla Ventures (supported by Vinod Khosla, a Californian venture capitalist), unveiled its joint venture with a division of China FAW Group, a local carmaker. The Chinese partner vowed to spend more than $200m on a factory in Shanxi, a northern province, that will produce 100,000 of the new engines a year.
3 The venture’s “OPOC” two-stroke engine, a novel twist on a century-old idea, consists of a pair of cylinders, each containing two opposing pistons. Its backers claim its fuel-efficiency will be up to 45% better than the four-stroke engines commonly used in cars. The technology was developed with financial help from the Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency, an arm of the Pentagon with a record of promoting breakthroughs (robot legs and self-driving cars are two others).
该合资公司的“OPOC”二冲程发动机对一个世纪以来的设计理念做了一点新的改变。这种发动机有一对气缸，各个气缸有两个对冲的活塞。支持者称其节油效率能达到45%,比现在普遍用于汽车的四冲程发动机更高效。这项技术得到了美国国防先进技术研究计划局(Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency)的经济帮助，该局是国防部的一个分支，素以促进技术突破著称（机器人腿和自动驾驶汽车就是两个例子）。
4 The engine can run on a variety of fuels. The plan is first to make diesel engines for use in lorries, and only later to consider petrol versions for cars. However, local boosters in Shanxi also want future configurations to burn methanol, which can be made from abundant local coal supplies.
5 Another noteworthy aspect of this deal, argues Andrew Chung of Khosla Ventures, is that it suggests the best way for inventive energy startups to achieve scale: make a big push in China. Despite the downturn in the solar business there, Bloomberg New Energy Finance, a research firm, estimates that the clean-technology market in China exceeded $60 billion last year, whereas America’s was less than $50 billion.
科拉斯风险投资公司的Andrew Chung指出了协议另一个引人注目的方面：刚起步的创新能源公司要扩大规模的最好办法就是在中国市场更进一步。尽管中国市场的太阳能生意不如从前，研究公司彭博新能源财经（Bloomberg New Energy Finance）估计，相比价值低于500亿美元的美国清洁能源市场，中国市场去年超过了600亿美元。
6 Commercialising new technologies is not easy in rich countries, says Amit Soman, the president of EcoMotors, since slow growth and legacy assets make incumbent manufacturers reluctant to take a punt on unproven new kit. But in China his firm has already reached two non-exclusive deals. In one of these, EcoMotors signed a $200m licensing agreement last April to let Zhongding Power make a version of its engines for diesel generators.
7 “The innovation cycle is being completed in China and other emerging economies, not America,” says Mr Chung. Maybe so, but there are two caveats. The first is that Chinese firms will not pay much for intellectual property, and will copy it as soon they figure out how. The second, observes Jonathan Woetzel of McKinsey, a consulting firm, is that only technology firms that “fit conveniently into the Chinese ecosystem”, to the benefit of local companies, will be allowed to prosper.
8 Consider the much-trumpeted recent arrival of Tesla Motors in China. The American electric-car firm unarguably has cutting-edge clean technology, but its business model of importing all its vehicles does not enrich powerful Chinese firms or transfer intellectual property to local joint ventures. So the subsidies and tax breaks lavished by China’s central and local governments on buyers of even the most wretched “new energy vehicles” made there will not be offered to purchasers of Tesla’s gorgeous green machines.
