如果风力发电场可以为世界提供能源会怎样呢?

如果风力发电场可以为世界提供能源会怎样呢?

An international agency that once brushed off the potential of wind energy has become one its biggest supporters.

一个曾经对风能的潜力不屑一顾的国际机构现在成了它最大的支持者之一。

The International Energy Agency (IEA) released a special report on wind power, saying that with continued improvements in technology and support from governments, offshore wind farms could generate more than 420,000 terawatt-hours per year worldwide — which is more than 18 times global electricity demand today.

国际能源机构(IEA)发布了一份关于风力发电的特别报告，称随着技术的不断进步和政府的支持，海上风力发电场每年可以在全球范围内产生超过42万太瓦时的电量，是目前全球电力需求的18倍多。

In order to reach these lofty goals, we'll need bigger turbines, floating platforms and improved energy policies, says the IEA. (Photo: Max Topchii/Shutterstock)

Offshore Wind Outlook 2019 is a 98-page document that looks at technological advances, market forces and a geospatial analysis of where wind power can work. It's a snippet of the group's annual world energy report, which will be released on Nov. 13. IEA, which was founded in 1974 to coordinate a response to disruptions in the flow of oil, has since expanded to explore all energy issues.

《2019年海上风能展望》是一份98页的文件，着眼于技术进步、市场力量和风能发电的地理空间分析。这是该组织将于11月13日发布的年度《世界能源报告》的一部分。国际能源署成立于1974年，旨在协调应对石油供应中断的措施。自那以来，该机构已扩展到探讨所有能源问题。

"Offshore wind currently provides just 0.3% of global power generation, but its potential is vast," said Dr. Fatih Birol, the IEA’s executive director, in a press release. "More and more of that potential is coming within reach, but much work remains to be done by governments and industry for it to become a mainstay of clean energy transitions."

国际能源署执行主任法提赫·比罗尔博士在一份新闻稿中说:“目前，海上风力发电仅占全球发电量的0.3%，但其潜力巨大。”“越来越多的潜力即将实现，但要让它成为清洁能源转型的中流砥柱，政府和行业还有很多工作要做。”

Science is changing attitudes toward wind power

科学正在改变人们对风能的态度

The first floating offshore wind turbine, 'floatgen,' is pictured off La Turballe, in western France, in September 2018. (Photo: SEBASTIEN SALOM GOMIS/AFP/Getty Images)

This backs up earlier research looking at the amount of wind energy available for harvest over our oceans. According to the study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, there's enough energy over the oceans to "potentially provide civilization-scale power."

这支持了早期的研究，即在我们的海洋上收集风能的数量。根据发表在《美国国家科学院院刊》杂志上的研究，海洋上的能量足以“潜在地提供文明规模的能量”。

To harvest that power, we would need to cover enormous stretches of the sea with turbines, a monumental engineering feat that would also have real environmental consequences. So while actually powering human civilization with wind power alone is probably impractical, the study demonstrates that floating wind farms have an immense untapped potential.

为了获得这种能量，我们需要用涡轮机覆盖大片的海域，这是一项具有里程碑意义的工程壮举，也会对环境产生真正的影响。因此，虽然仅靠风力发电来推动人类文明可能是不切实际的，但研究表明，浮动风电场具有巨大的开发潜力。

"I would look at this as kind of a green light for that industry from a geophysical point of view," said one of the study's researchers, Ken Caldeira of the Carnegie Institution for Science in Stanford, California.

“从地球物理学的角度来看，我认为这是该行业的一盏绿灯，”研究人员之一、加州斯坦福大学卡内基科学研究所的肯·卡尔代拉说。

The reason offshore wind power has so much more potential than land-based wind farms is that wind speeds can be as much as 70 percent higher over the sea. Part of that is because natural and human structures on land create friction that slows wind down, but researchers also found that wind over the ocean circulates from higher altitudes.

海上风力发电比陆上风力发电场更有潜力的原因是，海上风速可以高出70%。部分原因是陆地上的自然和人类结构产生了摩擦，减缓了风的速度，但研究人员还发现，海洋上的风是从更高的高度循环的。

"Over land, the turbines are just sort of scraping the kinetic energy out of the lowest part of the atmosphere, whereas over the ocean, it’s depleting the kinetic energy out of most of the troposphere, or the lower part of the atmosphere," explained Caldeira.

卡尔代拉解释说:“在陆地上，涡轮机只是把动能从大气的最低部分刮走，而在海洋上，它正在耗尽对流层的大部分，或大气的较低部分的动能。”

The study found that it would take a 3 million square kilometer wind installation over the ocean to provide all of humanity’s current power needs, or 18 terawatts. That's a lot of turbines; it would need to cover an area roughly the size of Greenland. Still, it's possible.

研究发现，在海洋上安装一个300万平方公里的风力设施，才能满足人类目前所有的电力需求，即18太瓦。这需要很多涡轮机;它需要覆盖格陵兰岛大小的面积。不过,这是可能的。