2019年知名外刊文章赏析(英语拓展阅读)

2019年知名外刊文章赏析（英语拓展阅读）

I ①Mark and Sara Borkowski live with their two young daughters in a century-old, fifteen-hundred-square-foot house in Rutland, Vermont. ②Mark drives a school bus, and Sara works as a special teacher; the cost of heating and cooling their house through the year consumes a large fraction of their combined income.

③Last summer, however, persuaded by Green Mountain Power, the main electric utility in Vermont, the Borkowskis decided to give their home an energy makeover. ④In the course of several days, coordinated teams of contractors stuffed the house with new insulation, put in a heat pump for the hot water, and installed two air-source heat pumps to warm the home. ⑤They also switched all the light bulbs to L.E.D.s and put a small solar array on the slate roof of the garage.

II ①The Borkowskis paid for the improvements, but the utility financed the charges through their electric bill, which fell the very first month. ②Before the makeover, from October of 2013 to January of 2014, the Borkowskis used thirty-four hundred and eleven kilowatt-hours of electricity and three hundred and twenty-five gallons of fuel oil. ③From October of 2014 to January of 2015, they used twenty-eight hundred and fifty-six kilowatt-hours of electricity and no oil at all.

III ①The Borkowskis’ house is not an Aspen earth shelter made of adobe and old tires, built by a former software executive who converted to planetary consciousness at Burning Man. ②It’s an utterly plain house, with Frozen bedspreads and One Direction posters, inhabited by a working-class family of four, two rabbits, and a parakeet named Oliver. ③It sits in a less than picturesque neighborhood, in a town made famous in recent years for its heroin problem. ④Its significance lies in its ordinariness.

IV ①Most of the technology isn’t particularly exotic—these days, you can buy a solar panel or an air-source heat pump at Lowe’s. ②But few people do, because the up-front costs are high and the options can be intimidating. ③If the makeover was coordinated by someone you trust, however, and financed through your electric bill, the change would be much more palatable. ④The energy revolution, instead of happening piecemeal, over decades, could take place fast enough to actually help an overheating planet. ⑤But all of this would require the utilities—the interface between people and power—to play a crucial role, or, at least, to get out of the way.

Power to the People by BILL MCKIBBEN

【翻译】

马克和萨拉，以及他们的两个女儿住在佛蒙特州，拉特兰一个1500平方英尺（约140平方米）的老房子里。马克是校车司机，萨拉是一个兼职老师。他们夫妇收入的一大部分都要花在这所房子的取暖降温上面。去年夏天，在佛蒙特州的大品牌电业公司，绿山能源的劝说下，他们决定给自家房屋来一次能源改装。短短几天时间，改装承包人为这所房子填充了隔热材料，安装了热水泵，以及两个制暖蒸汽泵。不仅如此，LED照明灯替换了所有的白炽灯，车库的石板顶上还安上了一个小型太阳能电池板。

改装的费用由他们支付，但绿山能源公司也会以降低电费的方式对此进行资助，从能源改装后的第一个月开始，他们就可以享受电费优惠。改装之前，从2013年10月到2014年1月，马克一家消耗了3411千瓦电量和325

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