迈向低碳经济市政融资和能源效率文献翻译.doc

外文题目： Toward a Low-Carbon Economy---Municipal Financing For Energy Efficiency and Solar Power 出 处： Environment Magazine 作 者： Merrian C. Fuller, Stephen Compagni Portis, and Daniel M. Kammen The economic and environmental need to transition to a low-carbon economy is now at the forefront of energy science, engineering, and policy discussions in the United States and internationally. Former Vice President Al Gore has called for a carbon-free electricity supply in the United States by 2018,1 and in California, Japan, and the United Kingdom, a growing list of municipalities have legislated 70–80 percent or higher reductions in their greenhouse gas emissions over the next four to five decades. These cuts are consistent with the recommendations of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Thus far much of the effort has been focused on technology and policy solutions, with very little attention given to how this change can be enabled through creative financing.A critical arena for this transformation is in buildings, which account for more than 70 percent of the electricity use2 and almost 40 percent of greenhouse gas emissions3 in the United States. Many of the more stringent laws to reduce energy use in buildings, such as Title 24 in California, 4 target new buildings. However, because buildings have many-decade lifetimes, it may be virtually impossible to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to the levels described by the lower-risk scenarios of the IPCC5 and adopted by local municipalities,6 states,7 and nations8 without a targeted effort to reduce energy demand in existing homes and commercial spaces.This means that retrofit efforts, such as improving energy efficiency and adding solar photovoltaics (PV) and solar thermal systems to buildings, need to expand dramatically. Many barriers exist to reducing energy consumption and increasing the use of renewable energy. One is high first cost (“up-front cost”), which is both a psychological and financial barrier for many people. Our research group from the University of California, Berkeley, has worked with a number of cities, initially Berkeley to address this barrier by making financing for solar power installations and energy-efficiency retrofits more appealing and accessible to property owners. Urgency around the need to cut emissions has inspired cities to apply old tools, such as municipal financing, to the new problem of reducing the amount of carbon in the energy supply.Clean energy municipal financing mechanisms like the City of Berkeley’s program Berkeley FIRST (Financing Initiative for Renewable and Solar Technology) have the potential to help catalyze the transition to a more sustainable use of energy and also deliver benefits beyond emissions reductions, including a new source of job growth, reduced strain on the electric power system, and more comfortable and well-maintained buildings. How do these initiatives work,and what might the financial impact be on participants at the state and national levels.Barriers to Reducing Energy DemandOver the last 30 years, a contentious debate has continued over why consumers and businesses choose or forego energy efficient products and practices, and what role public and enabling programs (financing and other) should play in influencing these decisions. Researchers have often tried to explain consumer efficiency related decisions using a life-cycle cost analysis, which looks at the up-front costs of adoption versus the energy savings over time. Many public policy efforts start with the premise that regulations should only promote options that give consumers a positive net present value for the life-cycle cost, using a discount rate for future savings of 5–8 percent. The net present value is the future discounted benefits minus the initial investment. Appliance standards were created using this framework with the intention of removing the least-efficient appliances from the market while keeping the financial burden to a minimum. The difference between a market rate of return and the implicit discount rates observed in consumer choice was labeled the “energy-efficiency gap,” and much effort has been devoted to closing this gap through incentives and policies to address perceived barriers. these same barriers also affect the decision to install solar power systems. Clean Energy Municipal FinancingBerkeley FIRST is an example of clean energy municipal financing in development by the City of Berkeley that will provide the up-front funds for residential and commercial property owners to install electric and thermal solar systems and make energy-efficiency improvements to their buildings. Berkeley has committed to provide funding for the program through the issuance of a special tax bond that is repaid semi-annually over 20 years through special taxes collected on only th。