一本教会你“做对”题的6级阅读书 day7 passage6
Passage 6 A Rosy Future of Wind 127
风力发电 《经济学人》
A report from the Department of Energy said
that America could build enough wind farms to provide 20% of
the nation's electricity by 2030. Pickens,an oilman,
plans to call for America to meet this goal by building wind farms
throughout the windy corridor that runs up the country
from Texas to the Dakotas. It would cost $1 trillion to build them,
plus another $200 billion to connect them to places
where the power is most needed,
which lie inconveniently far away from the corridor.
That is a staggering outlay, but it would free up American natural gas,
which now generates 22% of the country's electricity,
to be used for motor vehicles.
[01:01]The idea is that Americans could switch to natural gas vehicles,
[01:05]and the country could stop importing so much oil.
[01:10]As a bonus, says Mr. Pickens, the industry would create jobs
[01:15]and revitalize rural America.
[01:19]He points to the west Texas town of Sweetwater to prove his point.
[01:25]Ten years ago it was just one more struggling speck on the prairie.
[01:30]Its only excitement was an annual rattlesnake round-up.
[01:35]Then the wind industry started to take hold in west Texas and the panhandle.
[01:41]Locals initially worried that the turbines would be too noisy.
[01:47]They also worried that they would destroy the vast horizon.
[01:51]Other west Texans are less fascinated of the original view.
[01:56]"The landscape is an eyesore," counters a man from Groom.
[02:01]In any case, the turbines look nicer as the benefits accrue.
[02:07]In 1999 the state's wind power capacity was just 180 megawatts.
[02:15]Today Texas leads the nation with almost 5,000. Most of that
[02:20]is concentrated in the north-western quarter of the state.
[02:26]The economic impact on Nolan County, which encompasses Sweetwater,
[02:31]will be $315m this year. Wind has brought more than 1,000 new jobs to the town.
[02:42]This boom has made an impression on Texans.
[02:47]Wind power accounts for 3% of the state's electricity,
[02:51]compared with 1% nationwide. But the tax credit
[02:56]that has been driving its growth is about to expire.
[03:01]And then there is the question of the creaking grid.
[03:05]The state is mulling a plan
[03:07]that would enable the transmission of 17,000 additional megawatts
[03:13]at a cost of $6.4 billion.
[03:18]Building wind power capacity will not be an easy task.
[03:24]But there is an emerging agreement in Texas that it is worth the trouble.
[03:28]That is where Mr. Pickens can make a difference. His plan is undeniably quirky.
[03:37]Its emphasis on natural gas is strange, for one thing:
[03:42]America does not have many natural gas vehicles.
[03:46]But if Mr. Pickens wants to use his own fortune to sell the general public
[03:51]on the idea of wind power, that is all to the good.
[03:56]No one can accuse him of being a soft-headed tree-hugger.