晨讀英語(yǔ)美文60篇57 Energy in the Future
[00:09.66]The price of oil has soared from $43.45 a barrel to $65.35, a 50% gain.
[00:19.95]It is transportation such as driving back and forth to work
[00:24.32]and visiting companies that burns lots of fossil fuel.
[00:28.39]Suppressed by the increasing oil price,
[00:31.44]does it ever occur to you that a new,
[00:33.75]lightweight fuel cell running on methanol power you electric car?
[00:38.22]If they work,
[00:39.76]methanol fuel cells could be a major breakthrough in energy consumption
[00:44.13]and conservation and drastically cut air pollution from auto emissions.
[00:48.94]Whether they are used to run cars and buses
[00:52.88]or to make electricity for other applications,
[00:55.82]fuel cells operate by converting hydrogen to electricity
[01:00.10]without combustion.
[01:01.73]They are akin to continuously-recharging batteries.
[01:06.54]Hydrogen and oxygen are fed into a stack of plates that create electricity,
[01:11.35]with harmless water vapor as the by-product.
[01:14.53]These silent, zero-emission gadgets have long been used in NASA spacecraft.
[01:20.34]They represent the great hope of many environmentalists
[01:24.49]to power the first mass-produced electric car.
[01:27.98]Now the fuel cells are favoured by many venture companies through the world,
[01:33.12]such as Fuel Cell, Plug Power,
[01:37.56]Fuel-Cell Energy specializes in stocks of alternative energy companies.
[01:42.14]Plug Power is one of the few publicly traded fuel-cell companies.
[01:47.17]Unfortunately, neither company is making money at the moment.
[01:51.98]Fuel Cell lost $1.58 per share the past 12 months.
[01:58.22]Plug Power lost $64 cents a share.
[02:02.16]In the future, we may rely on many different types of power.
[02:05.65]Hydrogen, for example,
[02:07.29]has been praised as a clean fuel with great potential.
[02:10.90]But it’s still in the experimental stages.
[02:14.09]Two possible hydrogen plays:
[02:16.48]Quantum Fuel System Technologies,
[02:19.01]which designs and engineers hybrid and fuel-cell, vehicles.
[02:23.59]It, too is losting money.
[02:26.32]Praxair, an industrial gas company, making hydrogen,
[02:30.37]the company earned $2.29 per share the past 12 months.
[02:35.96]French carmaker PSA Peugeot Citroen on Monday
[02:40.65]unveiled the smallest fuel cell currently available for cars
[02:44.14]and pledged further research to halve the price
[02:47.65]of these environmental friendly power sources by 2010.
[02:51.47]The fuel cell is an 80 KW power unit and the size of a big suitcase
[02:56.84]that can be used in light municipal vehicles.
[03:00.00]It can run for 500 km,
[03:02.86]but still insufficient for general use.
[03:05.91]Furthermore, the size of them remain a problem
[03:09.87]that needs to be solved.
[03:12.14]Another problem remains starting with cold temperatures.
[03:15.09]We can still say confidently it offers a real answer for the future,
[03:20.50]as is put it by the vice president of French Carmaker PSA Peugeot Citroen.
