On a scorching July morning at a testing facility outside of Paris, a cadre of scientists, engineers, and architects wearing hard hats and safety goggles watched through protective glass as a machine molded a soupy, grey mixture into batches of brick-size blocks.

　　在7月里的一个炎热的上午，在巴黎郊外的一个测试中心里，一群科学家、工程师和建筑师戴着安全帽和护目镜，透过防护玻璃观看一台机器将一种粘稠的灰色混合物制成一块块砖大小的立方体。

　　Further along the line, a forklift operator carefully loaded the blocks into a curing chamber like loaves of bread in a bakery.

　　沿着这条生产线往前走，一名叉车司机小心翼翼地把这些块状物装进混凝土养护室，就像面包店里的面包一样。

　　What they were witnessing was a trial run of a new concrete-making process developed by Solidia Technologies, one that the New Jersey-based company hopes will dramatically reshape the way this building material is made.

　　他们见证了Solidia Technologies(固化技术公司)开发的一种新型混凝土制造工艺的试运行。总部位于新泽西的这家公司希望这种工艺能极大地改变这种建筑材料的制造方式。

　　By tweaking the chemistry of one of concrete’s essential ingredients—cement—and altering its curing process, the company says it can make concrete cheaper than the traditional process, while at the same time drastically cutting the carbon emissions associated with cement production.

　　该公司表示，通过调整水泥(混凝土的基本成分之一)的化学组成和性质，并改变其养护过程，可以制造出比传统工艺更便宜的混凝土，同时大幅减少与水泥生产相关的碳排放。

　　Cement is one of the global economy’s most carbon-polluting industries. Responsible for about 8% of global carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions in 2015, if it were ranked with individual countries, the cement industry would be the third-largest greenhouse-gas emitter in the world behind only China and the United States.

　　水泥行业是全球经济中碳污染最严重的行业之一。2015年水泥行业的二氧化碳排放量约占全球总排放量的8%，如果视水泥行业为一个国家，并与单个国家进行排名，它可能会成为世界第三大温室气体排放国，仅次于中国和美国。

　　And this already outsized footprint is only projected to grow in the coming decades as economic development and rapid urbanization continue across Southeast Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. According to the International Energy Agency and the Cement Sustainability Initiative, by 2050, cement production could increase by as much as 23%.

　　随着东南亚和撒哈拉沙漠以南的非洲地区的经济发展和快速的城市化进程，预计未来几十年内，这种已经超标的碳足迹只会进一步扩大。根据国际能源署和水泥可持续发展倡议的预测，到2050年，水泥产量可能会增加23%。

　　This poses a significant challenge for combating climate change. One 2018 study estimated that cement-related emissions will have to fall by at least 16% by 2030, and by far more after that, if nations are to meet the 2015 Paris Climate Accord target of staying below two degrees Celsius of warming this century.

　　对于应对气候变化，这是极大的挑战。2018年的一项研究指出，如果各国要实现2015年《巴黎气候协定》设定的“本世纪全球升温不超过2摄氏度”的目标，那么到2030年，与水泥相关的碳排放必须至少降低16%，而且之后的碳排放量还需要更低。

　　According to industry experts, reductions on that scale will require the widespread adoption of less carbon-intensive cement alternatives now under development in labs around the world. But in a market ruled by a handful of major producers wary of making changes to their existing business models, an absence of strong policies incentivizing greener technologies, and a construction industry reasonably cautious about novel building materials, the prospects for such a radical shift are far from certain.

　　行业专家表示，要实现如此大规模的减排，就必须广泛采用碳排放较低的水泥替代品。目前，世界各地的实验室都在研发这种替代品。但在这样一个由几家主要生产商主导的市场上，生产商对改变现有的商业模式持谨慎态度，而且目前缺乏强有力的政策来推动绿色技术的发展，而建筑行业对新型建筑材料的态度也相当谨慎，因此，这种根本性转变的前景仍具有很大的不确定。