Earlier this month, I wrote about how COVID-19 is a cautionary tale for climate change. There’s no doubt that we have experienced terrible suffering and economic hardship over the last several months. But as hard as it is to imagine right now when we’re still in the middle of the pandemic, climate change has the potential to be even more devastating.
我在本月早些时候撰写了一篇文章，谈到新冠肺炎如何为气候变化提供了前车之鉴。毫无疑问，在过去几个月中，我们经历了可怕的痛苦和经济上的困难。由于我们现在仍处在大流行之中因此难以想象，但气候变化可能会造成比新冠肺炎更大的破坏。
The pandemic has also reminded us how much innovation we need to prevent a climate disaster. The best numbers I have seen estimate that the economic slowdown due to COVID-19 reduced global emissions by around 8 percent. That’s not nothing, but the austerity that got us there obviously isn’t sustainable. If we’re going to address climate change, we need to find new ways to do things that don’t release greenhouse gases, including how we move around.这场大流行还提醒我们，我们只有进行大量的创新才能阻止气候变化可能造成的灾难。我所看到的最乐观估计，认为由新冠肺炎造成的经济放缓减少了约8%的全球碳排放。这并非无关紧要，但使我们达到这个减排量的紧缩措施显然是不可持续的。我们如果要应对气候变化，就需要找到不排放温室气体的新方法，其中包括如何交通出行。
When most people picture what contributes to climate change, vehicles are one of the first things that come to mind. Here in the United States, transportation is the number one contributor to emissions. But you might be surprised to learn that it only contributes 16 percent of global emissions. That’s a smaller percentage than how we plug in, grow things, and make things. Still, decarbonizing how we move around is essential if we’re going to get to zero net emissions.当大多数人在脑中勾勒是什么导致了气候变化时，车辆是最先浮现出来的事物之一。在美国，交通运输业贡献了最大的排放量。但你可能会惊讶地发现，它仅占全球总排放量的16%，比发电、农业和制造业等行业的占比都要小。即使这样，如果我们想要实现净碳排放为零，在出行方式上做到碳减排也十分必要。
Our goal here isn’t necessarily to make people move around less (although we should look for ways to cut back on driving, flying, and shipping where possible). As we’ve seen over the last several months, economies suffer when people are forced to stay close to home. 我们的目标不一定是要求人们减少出行（尽管我们应寻找方法尽量减少驾车、飞行和航行）。正如过去几个月我们所看到的那样，当人们被迫待在家里时，经济就会遭受冲击。
We want more people and goods to be able to travel. For some of the world’s poorest people--like smallholder farmers in sub-Saharan Africa -- the ability to move goods from rural areas to city markets can make the difference between life and death. To do that, we need to make sure transportation remains affordable to everyone. Products like gasoline, diesel, and even jet fuel are the standard for a reason: they can send you a long way for a low cost per gallon.我们想让更多的人能够出行，更多的货物能够流通。对于一些世界上最贫穷的人（例如撒哈拉以南非洲的小农），是否有能力将货物从乡下运到城里的市场可以关乎生死。要做到这一点，我们需要确保每个人都能负担得起交通运输所需的费用。像汽油、柴油甚至航空燃料这些产品之所以成为标准是有原因的：它们能以一个低廉的单位成本，送你去很远的地方。
So, how exactly do we fuel our need to move around without emitting greenhouse gases? The answer is simple, even if making it happen won’t be: use clean electricity to run all the vehicles we can, and get cheap alternative fuels for everything else.那么，我们究竟如何在不排放温室气体的条件下满足出行需求呢？答案其实很简单，即使操作起来未必简单：尽可能使用清洁电力驱动所有的车辆，并为无法做到这一点的车辆找到便宜的替代燃料。
Let’s start with the former. The good news is that we’ve made lots of progress on electric vehicles, or EVs. Unlike many of the green alternatives I’ve written about before on this blog, you can go out and buy one right now if you want. The batteries that power them have seen an 85 percent price drop since 2010, so they’re getting more affordable to purchase (although they’re still more expensive than gas-based options). Plus, increased competition in the market means there are more choices available to customers than ever before, from compact sedans to sleek sports cars. You’ll even be able to buy an all-electric pick-up truck soon thanks to legacy companies like GM and FORD and new carmakers like Rivian and Bollinger.让我们先从前者开始谈起。好消息是，我们在电动汽车方面已经取得了很多进展。与我之前写过的许多绿色能源替代方案不同，只要你想，你现在就能出去买一辆。自2010年以来，为电动汽车供电的电池价格下降了85%，因此电动汽车的价格变得更加可负担（尽管它们仍比燃油车贵）。此外，市场竞争的加剧意味着消费者比以前有了更多的选择，从紧凑型轿车到时尚跑车。你甚至很快将能买一辆全电动皮卡，这多亏了像通用汽车和福特等老牌公司，以及像里维安和勃林格等新晋汽车制造商。
Several companies are developing better and cheaper batteries that will hopefully make EVs a realistic option for every car owner. This video features QuantumScape, a manufacturer working to commercialize the next generation of battery technology. (I’m invested in their work both on my own and through Breakthrough Energy Ventures.)一些公司正在开发更好、更便宜的电池，这将有望使电动汽车成为对每个车主来说的实际选择。下面这个视频介绍了QuantumScape，这是一家致力于将下一代电池技术商业化的制造商。（我以个人身份并通过突破能源基金投资了这家公司。）
EVs excel at short-haul travel. That means they’re great options for personal cars and even medium-duty vehicles, like city buses and garbage trucks. But even if we develop cheap, long-range EVs that are powered by zero-carbon sources, electrification isn’t an option for many types of transportation.电动汽车在短途旅行中表现极好，这意味着它们很适合作为私人汽车甚至中型运输车辆（如城市公共汽车和垃圾车）。但即使我们开发出由零碳能源驱动的廉价远程电动汽车，电气化也不是许多交通工具的选择。
The problem is that batteries are big and heavy. The more weight you’re trying to move, the more batteries you need to power the vehicle. But the more batteries you use, the more weight you add -- and the more power you need. Even with big breakthroughs in battery technology, electric vehicles will probably never be a practical solution for things like 18-wheelers, cargo ships, and passenger jets. Electricity works when you need to cover short distances, but we need a different solution for heavy, long-haul vehicles.问题在于电池又大又重。你尝试移动的重量越大，你就需要更多的电池来驱动车辆。而你使用的电池越多，你就增加了越多的重量——这又导致你需要更多的电能。即使电池技术取得了重大突破，电气化或许也永远不会是18轮大货车、货船和喷气客机等的实用解决方案。电力可以用来满足短途旅行需要，但我们需要为重型及长途车辆寻找另一个解决方案。
This is where cheap alternative fuels come in. There are several different kinds of these fuels, but the one you’re probably most familiar with is biofuels.这便是廉价替代燃料登场的时候。市面上已经有几种这样的燃料，但你最熟悉的可能是生物燃料。
Today’s advanced biofuels are a lot different from the first-gen ones you’ve heard about, such as ethanol. Some are made from plants that aren’t grown for food, so they need little to no fertilizer (which you might remember is a big emitter of greenhouse gases). Others are made from agricultural byproducts, like corn stalks and the pulp that’s left over from making paper. Some of these fuels can even be dropped into existing engines without any modifications needed.如今的高级生物燃料与你听说过的第一代生物燃料（例如乙醇）具有很大不同。有些是用非食物性植物制成的，因此它们需要很少或完全不需要肥料（你可能还记得肥料是温室气体的主要排放源）。另一些则由农业副产品制成，例如玉米秸秆和造纸后剩下的纸浆。一些生物燃料甚至可以无需任何修饰调整就直接放入现有的发动机中。
I’m optimistic about these biofuels, but it’s too soon to think about replacing gasoline and other fossil fuels with them. Research on advanced biofuels is still underfunded, and they aren’t ready to be deployed at the scale we need. We need a lot more innovation before they become a realistic, cost-effective option for long-haul transportation.我对这些生物燃料感到乐观，但现在考虑用它们完全替代汽油和其他化石燃料还为时过早。关于高级生物燃料的研究仍然面临资金不足的问题，而且这些燃料还没有准备好以我们所需的规模被生产使用。在它们成为适合长途交通的实际且性价比划算的选择之前，我们需要更多的创新。
Another type of alternative fuel is electrofuels. By using electricity to combine the hydrogen molecules in water with the carbon in carbon dioxide, we can create a liquid fuel that works in existing engines. The carbon dioxide this process uses is captured directly from the atmosphere, so burning electrofuels doesn’t add to overall emissions. They’re very expensive, though. Depending on what fuel you're replacing, electrofuels can cost anywhere from 3 times to 7 times as much as fossil fuels. And like with EVs, the electricity used to create them needs to be from zero-carbon sources to be a real solution.另一种替代燃料是电燃料。通过使用电能将水中的氢分子与二氧化碳中的碳结合起来，我们可以制造出在现有发动机中工作的液体燃料。这一过程使用的二氧化碳直接从大气中捕获，因此燃烧电燃料不会增加整体排放。不过，这类燃料非常昂贵。根据你要用其替代燃料的种类，电燃料的成本会是化石燃料的3到7倍。而且同电动汽车一样，用于制造电燃料的电力需要来自于零碳能源，这样电燃料才能成为一种真正的解决方案。
Switching to electric vehicles and alternative fuels is the most effective way we can move toward zero emissions from the transportation sector. Although there are some other measures we can take to reduce emissions--like using less carbon-intensive materials to make cars, using fuels more efficiently, and moving around less--zeroing out all transportation emissions is going to require massive breakthroughs in these two areas.改用电动汽车和替代燃料是我们实现交通运输零排放最有效的方法。尽管我们还可以采取其他一些减排措施，例如使用碳含量较少的材料制造汽车、更高效地使用燃料以及减少出行，但实现整个交通运输业的零排放还将需要这两个领域的大量突破。
These technologies need to get much cheaper than they are today. That means finding ways to manufacture them at scale and to make sure they perform comparably to their fossil fuel counterparts.这些技术需要比现在更便宜。这意味着我们要找到大规模生产它们的方法，并确保其效能与化石燃料相当。
I’m inspired by the progress we’ve made so far, but we have a long road ahead of us (no pun intended). To prevent the worst effects of climate change, we need to get to zero net greenhouse gas emissions in every sector of the economy within 50 years. Decarbonizing how we move around is going to require lots and lots of innovation, just as in the other areas I’ve written about. I’m eager to see what role today’s technologies will play in a zero-carbon future and to discover what new breakthroughs will emerge in the years to come.我们迄今为止取得的进步令我感到鼓舞，但在我们面前还有很长的一段路（绝无双关之意）。为了防止气候变化产生最坏的影响，我们需要在50年内使每一个经济领域的温室气体净排放量降为零。在出行领域减少碳排放将需要许多许多的创新，正如我曾写过的其他领域一样。我迫切想要看到当今技术将在一个零碳未来中发挥怎样的作用，以及知道在未来几年中还会出现哪些崭新的突破。