We were purring along nicely although when it came to the energy revolution we seemed to lack drive, lack bite. Up to now that is. Today is the start of a journey but this is Europe's man on the moon moment. The EU wants to bring countries up to speed on climate protection with its Green Deal. Is Germany heading in the right direction? We don't need a command economy.

  It shouldn't be up to politicians to decide which sectors we invest in. But international treaties（条约）, court rulings（裁定） and natural disasters are ramping up the pressure on politicians. We must move faster in the battle against climate change. Germany wants to have net（纯粹的） zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2045 at the latest. But is this target to be climate neutral feasible? The future hangs in the balance.

  The EU wants to slash（ 大量削减） greenhouse gases and achieve a climate neutral Europe by 2050. The plan is to mobilize（(mobilise)动员） about a trillion euros of public and private money under the Green Deal. Germany, the EU's largest industrial nation and biggest CO2 emitter, faces massive restructuring in the transport, industry and energy sectors. I'm on my way to see the places where all this change is meant to happen. I'm cruising in a new German luxury car. It guzzles an average of 11.7 litres per hundred kilometres.

  What a ride! The model I'm driving was made（使） in 2020, the hottest year on record in Europe. Not long ago, Mercedes promoted these cars as ideal for the urban jungle. Are gasoline powered vehicles keeping with the times? Mercedes recently described them as their 'cash machine'. I would have liked to have asked them about that.

  But unfortunately, they didn't have time for an interview. So I'm off to Berlin to meet Hildegard Müller, the head of the VDA, the automotive industry's most powerful lobby（大厅） group. What's today's trend? The current model has been replaced by newer models. That model car is a 4-runner model. I think this is the most recent.

  Nope, there's already a new one. New models are always being introduced and older ones are gradually phased out. There are 1.5 billion vehicles already out there with internal combustion（燃烧） engines, and we have to find a solution for them if we want to take climate protection seriously. That's why we need synthetic（合成的） fuels, too. The charging infrastructure isn't growing fast enough either. We need 2,000 new charging points per week, rather than just 300.

  The same goes for renewables（能再生的） and expanding the grid（网格）. We don't have enough green electricity. So it's an integrative process and shows that this transformation（变化） is more complex than some people will admit. Perhaps I'm one of those people? It's true that automakers are making record profits from gasoline-powered vehicles. But I'm also fairly certain we'll have to leave them behind under the Green Deal.

  The car industry is falling behind, according to energy expert and economist Claudia Kemfert. She envisions（想象） a very different future, one without privately-owned vehicles. We need to transition to a more people-centered（居中） mobility（ 可动性） in our cities. Rather than privately-owned cars, we need more public transport, cycling and walking. There are so many vehicles in cities that sit idle for about 23 hours a day, taking up valuable space, from parking to infrastructure. Let's give that back to the people, in the shape of green spaces and playgrounds.

  We should digitize in the countryside as well. Mobility solutions in combination with e-mobility. We can create charge stations. Does that mean major job cuts in the auto（(口语)汽车） industry and huge losses? If it's done well, it won't lead to job losses. In the future, we need to design smart vehicles to provide mobility solutions.

  Apps will help us get from A to B. We won't have our own vehicles anymore. Instead, we'll perhaps share one within a community. The future of mobility is very different from what we know now. Kemfert says Germany must turn more to train travel in order to cut greenhouse emissions by 65% by 2030, compared to 1990 levels. Germany's state-owned rail company Deutsche Bahn has been calling to shift freight transport from the road to rail for some time now.

  Freight belongs on the railways. Politicians say it, people say it, because they want to move forward. So let's finally do what everyone has been saying for decades. I'm taking a train to Switzerland. Decades ago, the Swiss moved freight transport from road to rail on a route right through the Alps. The 57km-long Gotthard Tunnel was completed in 2016, the longest rail tunnel in the world.

  The Chanary Base Tunnel in the Canton of Ticino was the final segment（段）, completed in 2020. The vision was to connect the North Sea ports, from Rotterdam across Germany and the Alps, to Genoa and the Mediterranean. But only the Swiss part is complete. The German section is nowhere near done. In Basel, I meet one of the people who dreamt up the project. Benedict Weibel.

  The former head of Swiss Railways tells me how Switzerland made the switch. Trucks are banned from driving at night because of noise pollution on the face of it. But fundamentally, it's a protectionist（保护贸易论(者)） measure. Then we have the distance-based heavy goods charge. It was incredibly important. The stroke of genius and the whole cross-alpine（高山的） train route debate.

  We also needed that money to finance it. So basically, you diverted（转移） money from road to rail freight? It was always clear it would greatly relieve the pressure on the roads. In that sense, motorists（驾驶汽车的人） also have a great vested interest in shifting freight transport from the highway to the rails. Per Capita, Swiss Railways spends five times more on rail infrastructure than its German counterpart（副本）. Weibel is hoping that new technologies might increase rail traffic.

  As a rail operator, I learned having trains with varying speeds greatly reduces capacity. Fast trains, slow trains, all on the same network. Then there are regional trains that stop frequently. If you can harmonize speed, you can increase capacity enormously（极度）. And that's where all these digital advancements play into our hands. Sensors（传感器）, camera technology, artificial intelligence.

  On the German side, the rail network expansion is being delayed by planning problems, local protests and, probably, lack of political will. Deutsche Bahn believes it won't be able to link up with the cross-alpine route until 2041 at the earliest. I would have liked to ask why, but the company had no time for an interview. It seems to me that the transport sector is lagging behind in Germany. So how is industry shaping up in terms of the Green Deal? My next stop is Germany's second biggest steel maker, Zalzgitter, which alone accounts for about 1% of German CO2 emissions.

  I was once here in 2019. Back then, the company was planning to stop using coal to power its huge blast（爆炸） furnaces and switch instead to green hydrogen（[化学] 氢）. Green because it's made with electricity generated by wind power. They now have more wind turbines here, as well as the first electrolysis plants to produce hydrogen.