Besides the traffic and the weather, we Seattleites love to talk about all the construction going on in our city. The downtown skyline is full of cranes, and it seems like the building never stops. By the end of the year, 39 new projects will have been completed in downtown Seattle alone, and there are plans for more than 100 others to be finished in the next two years.
除了交通和天气，我们西雅图人喜欢谈论我们市里正在进行中的所有建设工程。市中心的天际线布满了吊车，建筑项目似乎永远不会停。到今年年底，仅在西雅图市中心就将有39个新项目完工，还有100多个项目计划在未来两年内完工。
Seattle is hardly alone. As the global population rises, urban areas are booming, and that means more and more buildings are going up. By one estimate, the world will add 2 trillion square feet of buildings by 2060—the equivalent of putting up another New York City every month for the next 40 years.西雅图并不是个例。随着全球人口的增长，城市地区正在蓬勃发展，这意味着越来越多的建筑正在拔地而起。据估计，到2060年，世界上将增加2万亿平方英尺的建筑物——这相当于在未来40年里，每个月再建造出一个新的纽约市。
There’s good and bad news in that statistic. The good news is that living in the city generally equates to a higher quality of life—you have access to better schools, health care, and job opportunities. The bad news is that the buildings themselves are a big contributor to climate change, and one of the five areas where we need to drive a lot of innovation if we’re going to avoid a climate disaster.这个数据既是好消息，又是坏消息。好消息是，生活在城市通常意味着更高的生活质量——你有机会获得更好的学校、医疗和工作资源；坏消息是，建筑本身是导致气候变化的一个重要因素，同时也是我们若想避免气候灾难则需要大力推动的五个创新领域之一。
There are two ways in which buildings are responsible for greenhouse gases. The first is the construction phase: Buildings are made of concrete and steel, both of which produce a lot of emissions when they’re being made. In fact, these two materials account for around 10 percent of the world’s annual greenhouse gases. And right now, we don’t have practical ways to make either one without releasing carbon dioxide.建筑物产生温室气体有两种方式。第一种方式是在建筑阶段：建筑物由混凝土和钢材构成，这两种材料在生产过程中都会产生大量的排放。事实上，这两种材料每年产生的温室气体约占全球总量的10%。当下，我们没有可行的方法来生产这两种材料而不释放二氧化碳。
This summer I wrote about a company I’ve invested in called Boston Metal that’s trying to change that, by developing a way to make zero-carbon steel using electricity instead of coal. The video below features a company I’m helping fund called CarbonCure, which has a clever approach to making cement, one of the key ingredients in concrete. They’re taking recycled carbon dioxide (usually captured in some other process), turning it into a mineral, and injecting it into cement before it’s used at a construction site.今年夏天，我写了一篇关于我投资的波士顿金属公司（Boston Metal）的文章，这家公司正在努力改变这一现状，通过发明一种利用电力而非煤炭来生产零碳钢铁的方法。下面的视频介绍了我参与投资的一家名为CarbonCure的公司，该公司有一种制造水泥（混凝土的关键成文之一）的巧妙方法。他们把回收的二氧化碳（通常是在其他过程中捕获的）转化成一种矿物，再将水泥用于建筑工地之前将这种矿物注入其中。
Although CarbonCure’s process still represents a net addition of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere—they can’t insert more carbon than is emitted in making cement—it does make the final product stronger. This allows companies to use less of it, which has the benefit of reducing emissions overall.
虽然CarbonCure此举仍会让大气中有二氧化碳的净增加——他们无法注入比生产水泥排放量更多的碳——但它确实能使最终产品更坚固。这使得公司可以使用更少的材料，从而从整体上减少排放。
The other way buildings contribute to climate change is with their ongoing operations. It’s natural to think of lights and appliances like TVs as the biggest energy hogs, but they’re not: It’s actually heating and cooling. If you live in a typical American home, your air conditioner is the biggest consumer of electricity you own—more than your lights or refrigerator.建筑物的日常运转是导致气候变化的另一种方式。人们很自然地认为电灯和电视等电器是最大的能源消耗源，但事实并非如此：最大的能源消耗源实际上是供暖系统和制冷系统。如果你住在一个典型的美国家庭里，你的空调是最大的电力消耗者——比灯或冰箱消耗得还多。
Worldwide, there are 1.6 billion A/C units in use. And that number will skyrocket as the world gets richer, more populous, and hotter; by 2050, there will be more than 5 billion A/Cs in operation. That could put us in a vicious cycle, where temperatures go up, so we run more air conditioners, which only makes it hotter, and on and on. This is another reason why it’s so urgent for us to decarbonize the world’s power grids.全球在用的空调有16亿台。随着世界变得更富裕、人口更多、天气更热，这一数字还将飙升。到2050年，将有超过50亿台空调运行。这可能会让我们陷入一个恶性循环，即当温度上升，我们就开更多的空调，而这只会让天气更热，如此循环往复。这也是我们迫切需要全球电网脱碳的另一个原因。
But energy use isn’t the only problem with air conditioners. They also contain refrigerants called F-gases, which molecule for molecule, cause much more global warming than carbon dioxide. In 2016, representatives from 197 countries committed to reducing the production and use of certain F-gases by more than 80 percent by 2045. (I’m funding some work to help developing countries meet this commitment, and various companies are now working on alternatives to F-gases.)但能源消耗并不是空调唯一具有的问题。空调还含有一种叫做氟化气体的制冷剂，这种制冷剂比二氧化碳更能导致全球变暖。2016年，来自197个国家的代表承诺，到2045年，将某些氟化气体的产量和使用量减少80%以上。(我正在投资一些项目帮助发展中国家实现这一承诺，许多公司现在正在研究氟化气体的替代品。)
Heating is a different issue. Some heaters run on electricity, and others run on fossil fuels like oil and natural gas. The best solution—from a climate point of view—is to electrify as much as we can (again, while decarbonizing the power grid) and supply the rest with zero-carbon fuels, like hydrogen fuels or advanced biofuels. Right now, though, these alternatives cost two or three times more than conventional fuels, so we’ll need a lot of innovation to make them more affordable.供暖则是另一个问题。有些供暖设备是用电的，有些则是用石油和天然气等化石燃料。从气候角度来看，最好的解决方案是尽可能多地实现电气化（这同样需要让电网脱碳），并向其余设备提供零碳燃料，如氢燃料或先进的生物燃料。然而，目前这些替代能源的成本是传统燃料的两到三倍，因此我们需要许多创新技术来降低它们的价格。
I’m aware of some promising technologies that could help buildings use energy more efficiently. I’m intrigued by windows that use so-called smart glass, which automatically turns darker when the room needs to be cooler, and lighter when it needs to be warmer. And I’ve invested in a company called 75F, which uses wireless sensors to measure temperature, humidity, darkness, and other factors and then uses the information to adjust heating, cooling, and lights. They’ve found that this system can cut a building’s energy use by up to 50 percent.我知道一些具有发展前景的技术可以帮助建筑物更有效地利用能源。我对使用所谓智能玻璃制成的窗户很感兴趣——当房间需要降温时，窗户会自动变暗，而当房间需要升温时，窗户会自动变亮。我投资了一家叫75F的公司，它使用无线传感器来测量温度、湿度、暗度和其他因素，然后利用这些信息来调节供暖设备、制冷设备和灯。他们发现这个系统可以削减一栋建筑物50%的能源使用量。
Reducing building emissions isn’t just a problem for technology to solve. Government and corporate polices can also help a lot.减少建筑排放不仅仅是技术要解决的问题，政府和企业的政策也能起到很大作用。
Governments have already promoted energy efficiency by setting high standards for buildings; we know a lot about how to make buildings greeners, and the right policies encourage more people to do it. Governments have also helped get efficient heaters and A/C units to market by certifying them through programs like the Energy Star ratings you might’ve seen on various products.政府已经通过为建筑设定高标准来提高能源效率。我们很了解如何使建筑更环保，且正确的政策也鼓励更多的人这样做。政府通过像“能源之星”（Energy Star）这样你可能在各种产品上看到过的评级标签，帮助高效能暖器和空调部件进入市场。
But what if labels didn’t just reveal how energy-efficient something is, but how many greenhouse gas emissions it’s responsible for? That’s the idea behind the Embodied Carbon Calculator for Construction, which tells you how much carbon was used to produce steel, cement, and other materials made by companies that volunteer the information. This data will be even more important in the years ahead; right now, 80 to 90 percent of emissions come from running the building over its lifetime, but as we use cleaner sources of electricity and make buildings more efficient, the emissions from construction materials will represent a larger share of the total.但是，如果标签不仅显示某个产品的节能程度，而且显示它导致了多少温室气体排放，结果将会怎样呢？这就是建筑用嵌入式碳计算器背后的理念：它能告诉你有多少碳被用于生产钢铁、水泥和其他材料，这些材料是由自愿提供信息的公司生产的。这些数据在未来几年将更加重要。目前，80%-90%的排放来自建筑物使用寿命内的运转，但随着我们使用更清洁的电力资源和更高效的建筑物，建筑材料造成的排放将在总排放量中占据更大比例。
Another step that will help is for companies and governments to commit to buying lower carbon materials for their building projects. California, for example, has a new “Buy Clean” policy, and Microsoft has a goal of reducing embedded carbon by 15 to 30 percent as it rebuilds part of its headquarters in Redmond, WA.另一个有益的举措是让公司和政府承诺为他们的建筑项目购买低碳材料。例如，加利福尼亚有一项全新的“购买清洁”政策，微软的一个目标是在其位于华盛顿州雷德蒙德的总部进行部分重建时，减少15%到30%的内嵌碳。
Finally, we can strengthen our building codes to ensure that buildings are designed to be not only energy efficient, but built with low-carbon materials. Unfortunately, some rules actually make it hard to use these materials. For example, if you want to put concrete in a building, the building code might define the precise chemical composition of the cement you can use in it. But that standard may rule out low-emissions cement, even if it performs just as well as the conventional kind.最后，我们可以强化我们的建筑规范，以确保建筑不仅是节能的，而且是用低碳材料建造的。不幸的是，一些规定实际上使这些材料难以使用。例如，如果你想在建筑物中加入混凝土，建筑规范可能会规定你可以使用水泥中的精确化学成分。但这个标准可能会排除低排放水泥，即使它的性能和传统水泥一样好。
Obviously, no one wants to see buildings and bridges collapsing because we relaxed our codes too much. But we can make sure the standards reflect the latest advances in technology, and the urgency of getting to zero emissions.显然，没有人希望看到建筑和桥梁因我们过度放松规范而倒塌，但我们可以确保这些标准反映出最新的技术进步，以及实现零排放的紧迫性。