2019年经济学人 木质房屋更环保(2)（在线收听）

Buildings can become greener. They can use more recycled steel and can be prefabricated in o?-site factories, greatly reducing lorry journeys. But no other building material has environmental credentials as exciting and overlooked as wood.

建筑可以更环保。可以使用更多的可回收钢材，可以在工厂外预制，大量减少卡车行程。但是，其他建筑材料不像木材那样具有明显却被忽视的环保资质。

The energy required to produce a laminated wooden beam is one-sixth of that required for a steel one of comparable strength. As trees take carbon out of the atmosphere when growing, wooden buildings contribute to negative emissions by storing the stu?. When a mature tree is cut down, a new one can be planted to replace it, capturing more carbon. After buildings are demolished, old beams and panels are easy to recycle into new structures. And for retrofitting older buildings to be more energy e?cient, wood is a good insulator. A softwood window frame provides nearly 400 times as much insulation as a plain steel one of the same thickness and over a thousand times as much as an aluminium equivalent.

生产一层合木梁所需的能量是同等强度钢梁所需能量的六分之一。树木在生长过程中从大气中吸收碳时，木质建筑通过储存这些物质而产生负排放。一棵成熟的树被砍伐时，可以种植一棵新的树来代替，从而吸收更多的碳。建筑物拆除后，旧梁和旧板很容易再循环成新的结构。为使旧建筑更节能，木材是很好的绝缘体。软木窗框的绝缘性能几乎是同等厚度的普通钢的400倍，是同等厚度的铝的1000倍以上。

A race is on to build the world’s tallest fully wooden skyscraper. But such edifices are still uncommon. Industry fragmentation, vicious competition for contracts and low profit margins mean that most building firms have little money to invest in greener construction methods beyond what regulation dictates.

世界上最高的全木质摩天大楼建造竞赛正在进行。但是这样的建筑仍不多见。行业分裂、合同的恶性竞争和低利润率意味着大多数建筑公司没有资金投资超出监管规定的环保建筑方法。

Governments can help nudge the industry to use more wood, particularly in the public sector—the construction industry’s biggest client. That would help wood-building specialists achieve greater scale and lower costs. Zero-carbon building regulations should be altered to take account of the emissions that are embodied in materials. This would favour wood as well as innovative ways of producing other materials.

政府可以帮助推动木材行业使用更多的木材，特别是公共部门——建筑业最大的客户。这将帮助木材建筑专家做到规模更大、成本更低。零碳建筑法规应加以修改，以考虑到材料本身的排放。这将有利于木材以及生产其他材料的创新方法。

Construction codes could be tweaked to make building with wood easier. Here the direction of travel is wrong. Britain, for instance, is banning the use of timber on the outside of tall buildings after 72 people died in a tower fire in London in 2017. That is a nonsense. Grenfell Tower was covered in aluminium and plastic, not wood. Modern cross-laminated timber panels perform better in fire tests than steel ones do.

建筑规范可以调整，以便更容易使用木材建造。这方面的发展方向是错误的。以英国为例，2017年伦敦一场塔楼火灾造成72人死亡后，英国开始禁止在高层建筑外部使用木材。简直荒唐可笑。格伦费尔塔是用铝和塑料覆盖的，而不是木头。现代交叉叠层木板在防火测试中比钢板性能更好。

Carpentry alone will not bring the environmental cost of the world’s buildings into line. wrong, just before his time.

仅靠木工无法使世界建筑的环境成本一致。但是使用木材不仅仅只是被赞赏，还有更多益处。第二只小猪没有错，只是时代不能理解。