雅思阅读 027 · Why Solar Power Is Taking Over the World
改编自 Scientific American（Stephanie Pappas, 2026）。题型：选择题 + T/F/NG + 填空。难度：较难（Passage 3，约 900 词）。
🎧 课文朗读音频（约 1 分钟）
正文 Passage
Forty-seven years ago U.S. President Jimmy Carter stood grinning in front of a set of 32 bulky solar panels. It was 1979, and the oil crisis had sent fuel costs skyrocketing. Carter, in response, was making the White House an example of conservation and alternative energy. "Solar energy will not pollute our air or water," he said. "We will not run short of it. No one can ever embargo the sun or interrupt its delivery to us."
The panels were expensive and rudimentary by today's standards. They cost roughly $160,500 in 2026 dollars, and they did not even generate electricity; all they did was heat water. But Carter's argument still resonates today: in a globalised economy in which a single conflict can shut down shipments of millions of barrels of fossil fuel overnight, the allure of the sun as a power source is inarguable.
"Today solar makes the cheapest electricity," says Walajabad S. Sampath, site director of the Center for Next Generation Photovoltaics at Colorado State University.
Even before the U.S.-Iran conflict closed the Strait of Hormuz for months, causing fossil-fuel prices to spike, solar was soaring. Last year the world added 600 terawatt-hours of solar photovoltaic generation, enough to power Canada for a year. It was the first time that a renewable source took the top slot in global supply growth.
Cheapest energy in human history
When Sampath started in the field, in the early 1990s, the thinking was that no solar panel could ever recapture enough energy from the sun to offset what went into building it. Today a standard solar setup reclaims its production energy in a year or two, and a home system costs roughly $25,000.
The cost-effectiveness of solar energy is partly attributable to technological advances that have driven efficiency up. One major advance made in the late 1980s was a type of solar cell called a "passivated emitter and rear cell" (PERC), which included an extra reflective layer on the back of the cell that captured more light.
"Higher efficiency means you need a smaller size of the panel, you need less land, less wiring, less racking," Sampath says. "All of that goes down as the efficiency goes up."
The plummeting price over the past decade is also a result of advances on the production side: the materials are purer, and the manufacturing process is more precise. Scale has contributed as well. The Chinese solar industry is now highly integrated and efficient, and larger factories can churn out panels at a lower cost per unit.
Last year financial advisory firm Lazard published a report showing that the levelised cost of energy for new utility-scale solar was $38 to $78 per megawatt-hour (MWh), compared with $48 to $109 per MWh for new natural gas plants. In 2020 the IEA declared that many solar projects were now the cheapest form of energy, not just today but in all of history.
Germany and China made it happen
Although the technology behind solar power has been around since the 1950s, its recent rise can be traced in part to developments in two countries in the early 2000s: Germany and China.
At that time, the German Green Party leveraged a power-sharing arrangement to demand subsidies for rooftop solar. Around the same time, China was massively expanding its manufacturing capacity. The German subsidies helped to create a European market for solar modules, and Chinese firms built factories to meet that demand.
After the 2009 economic crisis caused demand for solar panels to drop, the Chinese government stepped in to negotiate minimum import prices with the E.U. to prop up exports and set up national solar targets to jump-start domestic demand. The government also began investing billions in clean-energy research and development.
题目 Questions
Questions 1-4: Choose the correct letter.
1. What did Carter's 1979 solar panels do?
- A. generated electricity
- B. heated water
- C. powered the White House
- D. charged electric cars
2. Sampath says solar is now:
- A. the most expensive form of energy
- B. the cheapest form of electricity
- C. only useful in developing countries
- D. not yet practical
3. What does "higher efficiency" mean?
- A. you need larger panels
- B. you need less land, wiring and racking
- C. panels produce less electricity
- D. solar becomes more expensive
4. Why did Germany and China play key roles?
- A. Germany demanded subsidies and China built factories
- B. Germany invented solar panels
- C. China banned solar imports
- D. Germany and China merged their industries
Questions 5-8: T/F/NG
5. Last year solar was the top source of global electricity supply growth.
6. A home solar system today costs roughly $160,500.
7. In 2020 the IEA declared solar the cheapest form of energy in history.
8. The 2009 economic crisis increased demand for solar panels.
Questions 9-13: Complete the notes. Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS.
- Carter's solar panels cost roughly (9) ____________ in 2026 dollars.
- The world added (10) ____________ terawatt-hours of solar last year.
- A (11) ____________ solar cell included an extra reflective layer.
- New utility-scale solar costs $38 to $78 per (12) ____________.
- The Chinese government set up national solar targets to jump-start (13) ____________ demand.
答案 Answers
| 题号 | 答案 |
|---|---|
| 1 | B |
| 2 | B |
| 3 | B |
| 4 | A |
| 5 | TRUE |
| 6 | FALSE（that was Carter's 1979 panels; today it's ~$25,000） |
| 7 | TRUE |
| 8 | FALSE（caused demand to drop） |
| 9 | $160,500 |
| 10 | 600 |
| 11 | PERC |
| 12 | megawatt-hour |
| 13 | domestic |
核心词汇
solar power / photovoltaic / renewable energy / fossil fuel / efficiency / panel / megawatt / subsidy / manufacturing / cost-effective / rooftop solar / clean energy
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