China is notorious for its heavy smog. "It’s incredibly bad." Denise Mauzerall, an atmospheric scientist at Princeton. "The air pollution in eastern China can be so bad you can’t clearly see across the street. It can feel like you’re walking through a heavy fog that’s burning your lungs."
中國的霧霾非常嚴重。“情況非常糟糕。”普林斯頓大學的氣象科學家丹妮斯.莫澤羅爾是說到。“中國東部地區的空氣汙染非常嚴重，你幾乎看不清街對面的`情況。感覺像在濃霧中行走，而這種濃霧會灼燒你的肺部。”
But smog has other damaging effects too. Mauzerall and her team have found that in winter months the smog in China’s northeastern provinces is so severe it blocks more than 20 percent of sunlight from reaching the region’s solar panels.
霧霾還有其他危害。莫澤羅爾和團隊發現，中國東北部省份在冬季遭遇的霧霾非常嚴重，以致該地區太陽能板接收到的太陽光減少了20%。
The findings, based on satellite data and photovoltaic performance models, are in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
這一研究結果基於衛星資料以及光伏效能模型得出，結果發表在《美國國家科學學院院刊》上。
One solution to the problem might be installing even more solar. "There’s this virtuous cycle—whereas if you use more solar electricity, you can reduce your use of coal. And that will reduce the air pollution levels, and that will then allow you to generate more solar electricity."
其中一個解決方案是安裝更多的太陽能。“這是良性迴圈，如果使用更多的太陽能電力，那就可以減少煤的使用量。這就會減少空氣汙染的程度，進而產生更多太陽能電力。”
China hopes to harvest 10 percent of its electricity from solar by 2030. They’ll need 400 gigawatts, or about 10 times what we have installed in the U.S. today. It’s an optimistic forecast for solar… and hopefully, for China’s air quality, too.
中國希望在2030年可以利用太陽能生成10%的電力。這需要4000億瓦特，約是現在美國安裝的10倍。這是對太陽能的樂觀估計，當然中國的空氣狀況也會日益改善。
