查看英国《金融时报》的新报头，会令雄心勃勃的亚洲人颇为得意。在这个版画上，以及英国《金融时报》网站(FT.com)类似的蒙太奇宣传图片上，5座最高的建筑分别是上海、香港、科伦坡和台北等亚洲城市的标志性建筑。

It is gratifying for ambitious Asians to examine the FT's new masthead on the page opposite. The five tallest buildings in the engraving¹, and in the similar promotional montage on the FT.com website, are iconic landmarks² in the Asian cities of Shanghai, Hong Kong, Kuala Lumpur and Taipei.

不那么令人愉快的是，对于这些令人敬畏的摩天大楼的能源效率，亚洲人的感兴趣程度与其对高度的痴迷并不相称。在亚洲，人们讨论全球变暖、空气污染、风能和混合动力汽车等环境问题的热烈程度几乎与欧美不相上下，但相关的建筑标准方面鲜有行动。

Less gratifying is the fact that Asia's obsession³ with height is not matched by an interest in the energy efficiency of its awe-inspiring skyscrapers⁴. Environmental issues - global warming, air pollution, wind power and hybrid⁵ cars - are almost as much discussed in Asia as they are in Europe or the Americas, but the related if unsexy subject of building standards merits hardly a murmur⁶.

但这不是小事。通常而言，建筑物占一国能源消耗量的三分之一。据估计，中国（世界上人口最多的国家）建筑物每平米能源消耗量是多数发达国家的2至3倍。对于曾在夏天在冷气十足的餐馆中穿上羊绒衫，或者在北京寒风刺骨的冬夜大敞窗户以免被楼内的集中供暖活活烤熟的人而言，这一数字并不令人意外。

Yet this is no small matter. Buildings typically account for a third of a nation's energy consumption. China, the most populous⁷ country on earth, is estimated to use two to three times more energy per square metre of its buildings than most advanced economies. This will come as no surprise to anyone who has donned a woolly jumper in a freezing air-conditioned restaurant in summer, or thrown open the windows on an icy winter's night in Beijing to avoid being baked alive by the communal⁸ heating in their apartment building.

中国和其它亚洲国家迫切需要赶上全球改善建筑物能效的步伐，解决建筑物在设计、建造和使用方面存在的两大问题。

China and other Asian economies need urgently to catch up with global improvements in building efficiency and to tackle the two big problems with the way buildings are designed, constructed and used.

第一个问题是行为问题，即亚洲人对空调的痴迷。这一点从新加坡前总理、现任内阁资政李光耀(Lee Kuan Yew⁹)身上就能得到体现。

The first problem is behaviour, or Asia's love affair with air-conditioning, as embodied¹⁰ in Lee Kuan Yew, former prime minister of Singapore and now the city's "minister mentor¹¹".

李光耀曾将将空调称为第二个千年最重要的发明，因为它使热带国家的居民能享受到温带国家的文明成就。他本人坚持白天将温度设在22oC，夜间设在19oC。相比之下，并不以环保而著称的香港政府则将办公室夏季温度设在25.5oC，以节省制冷能源，超级节能的日本则将温度设在"令人冒汗的"28oC。

Mr Lee once called the air-conditioner the most important invention of the second millennium¹² because it had allowed the inhabitants of hot countries to match the achievements of civilisations in temperate¹³ zones. He himself insists on a temperature setting of 22oC by day and 19oC at night. For comparison, the Hong Kong government - not known for its green credentials¹⁴ - sets a summer temperature of 25.5oC for its offices to save energy on cooling, while super-efficient Japan goes up to a sweaty maximum of 28oC.

李光耀对控制温度的痴迷并非亚洲人所独有。美国人同样热衷于生活在温度和湿度恒定的环境中。但在发展中的亚洲，空调这一新奇事物激发了人们与自然气候做斗争的执拗愿望。亚洲大型建筑物中的办公室、商店和电影院往往在盛夏冷得令人发抖，在冬季热得让人窒息。处于热带的新加坡被冠以"空调之国"的称号。在香港，只有公务员才必须遵守政府的规定，私营企业很少会这样做。

Mr Lee's addiction¹⁵ to climate control is not peculiarly Asian. Americans are just as eager to live their lives at uniform levels of temperature and humidity. But the novelty of air-con in developing Asia has stoked a perverse¹⁶ desire to fight the natural climate. Offices, shops and cinemas in Asia's big buildings tend to be bitterly cold in mid-summer, and stiflingly¹⁷ hot in winter. Tropical Singapore has been dubbed¹⁸ the "air-conditioned nation". In Hong Kong, only civil servants are obliged to follow the government's guidelines and few private businesses do so.

第二个问题涉及法规。亚洲需要通过法规影响人们的行为，确保首先把建筑造好。除了日本和韩国，很少有亚洲国家仿效西方的"绿色"或"可持续"建筑理念。考虑到亚洲有大量建筑正在建设之中，而且它们的寿命很可能长达数十年，因此，上述理念对于能源使用具有非常深远的意义。

The second problem concerns the laws and regulations needed to influence people's behaviour and ensure that good buildings are constructed in the first place. Apart from Japan and South Korea, few Asian countries have done much to emulate¹⁹ the western adoption²⁰ of "green" or "sustainable" buildings - a matter of profound significance for energy use given the large number of buildings under construction in Asia and the likelihood that they will stand for decades to come.

在香港这个富裕而人口密集的城市，其经济逻辑长期以来为一直房产开发商所主导。它们自然想要削减成本以赚取更多利润，但支付电费账单、进而承担低能效代价的常常是不幸的租户，而非建筑物的所有者。用香港大学建筑系教授Josie Close的话说，这个城市的建筑法规"软弱无力"，在提高能效或强制执行环境标准方面做得不够。

In Hong Kong, a wealthy, densely²¹ populated city, the economy has long been dominated by property developers. They might be expected to want to cut costs to make more profit, but it is the unfortunate tenants²², not the owners, who usually pay the electricity bills and thus bear the costs of inefficiency²³. The city has what Josie Close, of the University of Hong Kong's department of architecture, calls "pussycat building codes" that do not do enough to increase energy efficiency or enforce environmental standards.

希望还是有的。应当责成亚洲每一个与建筑法规有关的官员，都去看一看澳大利亚墨尔本小柯林斯街(Little Collins Street)上一座其貌不扬的10层建筑。这座名为"市府2号楼"(Council House Two)的新建筑是市政府的办公楼，它几乎使用了所有可以想象得到的设计特色和技术，以节约能源，循环用水，改善工作环境。

There is still hope. Every senior bureaucrat²⁴ in Asia concerned with building codes should be obliged to inspect a modest-looking, 10-storey building in Little Collins Street in the Australian city of Melbourne. Called CH2 (for Council House Two), this new office building for the city government was built using almost every imaginale design feature and technology that could save energy, recycle water and improve the working environment.

这座楼几乎可以肯定是亚太地区最环保的办公楼，它成功的关键并非房顶上的太阳能电池板或风轮机，而是"被动"系统--让这座大楼能利用而非对抗自然气候。比如说，在夏季，庞大的混凝土地板和屋顶白天吸收热量，到了晚上，当凉爽的新鲜空气吹进来后，地板和屋顶又被冷却了。这座楼的设计目标（已经基本实现），是要比老的市政大楼节能80%，并提高生产率。

The keys to its success - this is almost certainly the greenest office building in the Asia-Pacific - are not the solar panels or the wind turbines on the roof but the "passive" systems that enable the building to use the natural climate rather than fight it. Massive concrete floors and ceilings, for example, absorb heat during summer days and are cooled at night as the building is flushed with colder fresh air. The aim, already close to being achieved, is to cut energy use by a remarkable²⁵ 80 per cent compared with the old council building and to increase productivity.

或许这些理念中的一部分最终将在亚洲得到竞相效仿。在中国广州，一栋名为"珠江大厦"(Pearl River Tower)的71层高楼已经动工。这座大楼由美国的SOM(Skidmore, Owings & Merrill)设计，SOM自豪地称之为"迄今建造的最节能的超高层建筑"。

Perhaps some of these ideas will catch on in Asia after all. In Guangzhou, southern China, work has begun on a 71-storey building called the Pearl River Tower, designed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill of the US and touted²⁶ by SOM as "the most energy-efficient super-tall tower ever built".

没错，墨尔本的"市府2号楼"需要时间来克服其运作初期的一些问题，比如照明不足等；珠江大厦的太阳能和风力发电机，可能也永远无法实现该建筑能源净用量为零的目标，但是，这些雄心勃勃的项目正在帮助设定所有亚洲大型建筑最终都不得不达到的标准--为了这个星球，也为了每一个支付电费账单的人。

It is true that Melbourne's CH2 has taken time to overcome its teething problems - the lighting²⁷, for instance, turned out to be too dim - and it is possible that the Pearl River Tower's solar and wind generators²⁸ will never fulfil the building's goal of zero net energy use. But these ambitious projects are helping²⁹ to set standards that all of Asia's large buildings will eventually have to follow - for the sake of the planet, and for the sake of anyone who pays an electricity bill.