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From petrol to plastics, oil-derived products define modern life. A bold plan to change comes with huge costs — but researchers and policymakers should take it seriously.
从汽油到塑料，石油衍生产品定义了现代生活。大胆的改变计划需要付出巨大的代价，但研究人员和政策制定者应该认真对待。
Fossil energy sources need to be eliminated — and communities that will be adversely affected during the clean-energy transition supported, as we wrote in an Editorial last week. In this week’s issue, Eelco Vogt and Bert Weckhuysen, chemists at Utrecht University in the Netherlands, lay out what needs to be done to decarbonize an important component of fossil-fuel infrastructure: crude-oil refineries.
正如我们上周在社论中所写，需要消除化石能源，并支持在清洁能源转型期间受到不利影响的社区。在本周的期刊中，荷兰乌得勒支大学的化学家 Eelco Vogt 和 Bert Weckhuysen 阐述了需要采取哪些措施来使化石燃料基础设施的重要组成部分：原油炼油厂脱碳。
The workings of refineries are little known to most people outside the oil and gas industries, yet are essential to the global economy. They convert crude oil into liquid fuels used in transportation, notably diesel, petrol and jet fuel. Refineries also provide chemicals and synthetic materials that are used to produce most of today’s consumer and health-care goods. In a Perspective article, Vogt and Weckhuysen set out a blueprint for decarbonizing oil-refinery capacity by mid-century. They acknowledge that the cost and scale of the necessary transition are “staggering”. Their vision deserves attention. Industry leaders and policymakers need to take it seriously.
石油和天然气行业以外的大多数人对炼油厂的运作知之甚少，但炼油厂对全球经济至关重要。它们将原油转化为运输中使用的液体燃料，特别是柴油、汽油和喷气燃料。炼油厂还提供用于生产当今大多数消费品和保健品的化学品和合成材料。在一篇《透视》文章中，沃格特和韦克惠森制定了到本世纪中叶炼油厂脱碳的蓝图。他们承认必要转型的成本和规模是“惊人的”。他们的愿景值得关注。行业领导者和政策制定者需要认真对待这一问题。
Modern refinery functions include ‘cracking’ crude oil, whereby molecules with long chains of carbon atoms are broken down into shorter ones. This process helps to produce transportation fuels, as well as the chemicals and materials used in many medicines and everyday products, from shampoo to sticky tape. At present, the overwhelming proportion of global refinery output — at least 70% — goes into fuelling transport, including road, rail, shipping and aviation. Under net-zero scenarios, much of this demand will fall with the electrification of transport and with greater use of hydrogen and biomass-derived fuels.
现代炼油厂的功能包括“裂解”原油，将具有长碳原子链的分子分解成较短的碳原子链。这一过程有助于生产运输燃料，以及许多药品和日常用品（从洗发水到胶带）中使用的化学品和材料。目前，全球炼油厂产量的绝大多数（至少 70%）用于为运输提供燃料，包括公路、铁路、航运和航空。在净零情景下，随着交通电气化以及氢和生物质衍生燃料的更多使用，这一需求的大部分将下降。
In the net-zero scenario used by the authors, demand for conventionally produced carbon-based transportation fuels is still expected to exist, at around one-third of today’s levels. Such fuels will be needed in part to satisfy future energy needs in Africa, Asia and Latin America as countries there continue to develop economically. Use of fuel in aviation, which is difficult to electrify, will also increase as the tourism industry continues to boom. Some projections forecast less demand for conventionally produced fossil fuels, but all scenarios suggest that alternatives to the production of such fuels are needed.
在作者使用的净零情景中，预计对传统生产的碳基运输燃料的需求仍然存在，约为当今水平的三分之一。随着非洲、亚洲和拉丁美洲国家经济的持续发展，这些燃料的部分需求将满足这些国家未来的能源需求。随着旅游业的持续繁荣，难以实现电气化的航空燃料使用量也将增加。一些预测预测对传统生产的化石燃料的需求将会减少，但所有情况都表明需要替代此类燃料的生产。
The authors propose developing refineries that can make chemicals and materials from biomass and recycled plastic, and synthetic fuels from carbon dioxide and hydrogen, instead of from crude oil. It would be necessary to capture CO2 from existing activities that produce a lot of the gas, such as cement manufacturing, or directly from the air. The hydrogen would come from electrolysing water. The entire process would need to be powered by renewable energy — and is estimated to require ten times as much energy as existing refineries require. In their plan, the authors pose urgent questions. Some are for researchers. Some are for policymakers. Some are for industry. Ideally, answers would come from discussions involving all of these stakeholders.
作者建议发展炼油厂，利用生物质和再生塑料生产化学品和材料，利用二氧化碳和氢气（而不是原油）生产合成燃料。有必要从产生大量气体的现有活动（例如水泥制造）中捕获二氧化碳，或直接从空气中捕获二氧化碳。氢气来自电解水。整个过程需要由可再生能源提供动力，预计所需能源是现有炼油厂所需能源的十倍。作者在他们的计划中提出了紧迫的问题。有些是供研究人员使用的。有些是为政策制定者准备的。有些是用于工业的。理想情况下，答案将来自所有这些利益相关者的讨论。
A key question relates to the energy needed to power refineries. Creating refineries powered entirely by renewables will be a huge challenge. Refineries run continuously, but renewable sources are not always available; for example, solar energy in darkness, or wind energy on a calm day. Technologies that can produce or compensate for energy fluctuations, at the required scale, are still in development. Refineries’ essential role in the manufacture of drugs and everyday household products also needs to be addressed. For the latter, consideration must be given to the need to reduce humanity’s material footprint — an aim of ongoing talks on the United Nations plastics treaty.
一个关键问题涉及炼油厂所需的能源。创建完全由可再生能源供电的炼油厂将是一个巨大的挑战。炼油厂持续运转，但可再生能源并不总是可用；例如，黑暗中的太阳能，或晴天中的风能。能够按所需规模产生或补偿能源波动的技术仍在开发中。炼油厂在药品和日常家用产品制造中的重要作用也需要得到解决。对于后者，必须考虑减少人类物质足迹的需要——这是正在进行的联合国塑料条约谈判的目标
Cost is a third question. Building alternative refinery capacity at large scales won’t come cheap. Here, the obstacles are mostly considerations for decision-makers, rather than technological barriers. In terms of cost, the authors calculate that replacing one oil refinery with technology compatible with net-zero goals would cost between €14 billion (US$15 billion) and €23 billion. They estimate that the total cost of converting the world’s refining capacity by 2050 would be between €320 billion and €520 billion per year.
成本是第三个问题。大规模建设替代炼油能力并不便宜。这里的障碍主要是决策者的考虑，而不是技术障碍。就成本而言，作者计算出，用与净零目标兼容的技术取代一座炼油厂将花费 140 亿欧元（150 亿美元）到 230 亿欧元。他们估计，到 2050 年，转换全球炼油能力的总成本将达到每年 3200 亿至 5200 亿欧元。
That is a large sum — although it is on existing scales of public and private industrial investment. If the world decides to embark on a path to replacing fossil-fuel refineries with net-zero ones, this change must be mandated or incentivized. To unlock the required funding, the authors call for policies including the implementation of carbon taxes and removal of fossil-fuel subsidies. There will be resistance — not least from fossil-energy companies and their advocates — that will almost certainly slow the authors’ timetable.
尽管按照现有的公共和私人工业投资规模来看，这是一笔巨款。如果世界决定走上一条用净零炼油厂取代化石燃料炼油厂的道路，则必须强制或激励这种变化。为了释放所需的资金，作者呼吁采取包括实施碳税和取消化石燃料补贴在内的政策。将会有阻力——尤其是来自化石能源公司及其支持者的阻力——这几乎肯定会减慢作者的时间表。
We don’t know what the world will look like in 2050. In some future scenarios, fewer refineries might be needed. Some researchers have proposed that ammonia could be produced without the emission of CO2 and used as a fuel for internal combustion engines used in long-distance shipping. That would require less refinery capacity, although large amounts of energy would be needed to generate the hydrogen required to produce the ammonia.
我们不知道 2050 年世界会是什么样子。在未来的某些情况下，可能需要更少的炼油厂。一些研究人员提出，可以在不排放二氧化碳的情况下生产氨，并将其用作长途运输中使用的内燃机的燃料。这将需要更少的炼油厂产能，尽管需要大量的能量来产生生产氨所需的氢气。
The research community knows enough to start imagining different versions of the future, and recognizing just how hard it might be to reach them before it’s too late. A little over a quarter of a century is a very short period for this scale of technological change. As such, we must take the next step and, following the authors’ advice, evaluate and develop the processes that ensure we reach net-zero targets as soon as and in the most effective way possible.
研究界已经足够了解，可以开始想象未来的不同版本，并认识到在为时已晚之前实现它们可能有多困难。对于这种规模的技术变革来说，四分之一世纪多一点的时间是非常短的。因此，我们必须采取下一步行动，按照作者的建议，评估和制定流程，确保我们尽快以最有效的方式实现净零目标。
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