2015年考研英语阅读理解精选20篇(第十九篇)

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考研英语中阅读理解是重头戏，所占比例较大，考生在复习提高的过程中需要多付出精力。可是对于阅读理解来说，要提高并不是一蹴而就的事情，阅读能力需要日积月累，才能够提高速度和做题的技巧效率。为此，新东方在线小编为广大考生奉上20篇阅读理解，希望大家通过积累来最终提升综合阅读能力。
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    低碳计划之碳收集及储存技术
    IN the push to tackle climate change, most attention is devoted to ditching
fossil fuels for low-carbon power sources. But the fight has another prong:
stripping carbon dioxide out of the smokestacks of power plants and other
factories and storing it safely underground. The distinct parts of this process,
known as carbon capture and storage (CCS), are already in operation. But no one
has yet joined them together on an industrial scale. So it was a blow when the
government recently scrapped plans to build the country’s first CCS unit at the
Longannet coal-fired power station in Scotland, claiming it cost too much.
    The prospect is appealing. In Britain, 72% of electricity is generated from
gas and coal; China and America are even more reliant on fossil fuels. Finding a
way to remove 90% of the carbon, as CCS promises to, would be a giant leap
towards cutting global emissions. And Britain is a promising location. Its
geology is ideally suited to storing carbon dioxide—in depleted oil-and-gas
fields in the North Sea, as well as in saline aquifers, deep porous rocks full
of salty water. Commercial opportunities might follow: Britain could import
waste gas from northern Europe, where pilot CCS projects have stumbled because
of opposition to onshore stores. There is a potential export market for the
technology: the International Energy Agency reckons 850 projects will be needed
globally by 2030.
    Longannet was the last project standing from a government-funded
competition launched in 2007 to build a British capture facility. The consortium
behind it, comprising Scottish Power, National Grid and Shell, says its
engineering design shows CCS is now technically feasible. But building the plant
would cost up to £1.5 billion, the consortium predicted. This didn’t cover
operating costs—around £2 billion over 15 years—or the price of storing CO2.
Since the scheme overshot the government’s £1 billion budget, it pulled the
plug.
    Critics say the idea of putting a whizzy new piece of kit on a 40-year-old
power station was always daft, and that the pilot should be at a newer coal- or
gas-fired plant. The business case for Longannet has certainly worsened
recently. Of all fossil fuels, coal has been hit hardest by two new pieces of
legislation. A carbon floor price, announced in late 2010, makes dirty
coal-generation more expensive. And the European Industrial Emissions Directive,
agreed in June 2009, means old belchers like Longannet would anyway have to make
pricey modernisations by 2020.
    Still, any first go at such an unproven technology would be expensive and
hard to cost precisely, says Stuart Haszeldine of Edinburgh University: “You
can’t just rock up at a supermarket and buy a CCS project.” The government is
now inviting a new round of pilot proposals, but it needs to ensure that it does
not repeat the drawn-out debacle of Longannet. That means addressing a concern
raised last year in a government-commissioned report. This warned that
developing storage sites “may be an uncertain, time-consuming, costly and risky
business opportunity” which may require financing prior to, and distinct from,
any pilot capture scheme. Industry is also unlikely to invest speculatively on
the pipeline infrastructure needed to transport CO2.
    Ministers needs to get a move on. A quarter of the country’s generating
capacity is due to come offline within a decade. And since capturing carbon
itself uses a lot of energy—25-30% of a plant’s generation, by most estimates—if
CCS technology is widely deployed then Britain will need even more of it. The
technology may yet have a future—if the government is prepared to put a little
more of its money where its carbon is.(605words)
    付出会有回报，提高需要努力，小编希望每一位决定了考研的考生都能够坚定自己的目标，并为实现目标努力奋斗，坚持不懈，只有这样才能收获丰厚的果实。2015年考研圆梦，大家一起努力。
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