3 . There was a point in time when the solar industry was considered dead money. It was too expensive, too inefficient, and too inconsistent to be a viable (切实可行的) alternative energy source for really anything, let alone your home or office.

But those days are long gone.

Solar energy costs have dropped more than 70% over the past 10 years, and are now cheaper than fossil fuels in most parts of the United States. Better yet, the drivers of these cost declines — economies of scale (规模经济) and technological improvements — are durable (耐久的) , and therefore, solar is only going to get even cheaper. Indeed, these forces are so powerful in the solar industry that they have their own law — Swanson’s Law — which states that the price of solar modules (模块) decreases by about 20% for every doubling in global solar capacity.

Meanwhile, solar panels have become very efficient at transforming light from the sun into usable energy. Back in 1992, researchers at the University of South Florida made a thin-film solar cell with 15.9% efficiency — and that was considered a breakthrough at the time.

These days, though, your average silicon solar cells’ efficiency rate is around 20%. That’s standard. And some research efforts have even managed to achieve near 50% efficiency in certain lab tests.

At the same time, these solar systems have become dramatically more consistent. One of the biggest hurdles for solar in the early 2000s was its intermittency — the sun doesn’t shine every day, so what do you do when its cloudy?

Well, that’s why the clean energy industry has developed energy storage solutions, which are basically just big batteries that homeowners and office building managers can install on-site and link to their solar panels to store excess (过度的) solar power on super sunny days, and use that power on cloudy days.

Cheapest. Most efficient. Most consistent. That’s a powerful combination. No wonder solar industry has accounted for 58% of all new energy capacity additions so far in 2021 and is only going to get stronger and more active over the next 10 years — to a point where, by 2030, I wouldn’t be surprised to see solar industry accounting for 90%+ of all new energy capacity additions.

Yours,

Li Hua

8 . It was a hot Saturday at a crowded mall, and I was walking alongside my mom. Mom is short, skinny, and easy to be ________ in a crowd. As we walked, I ________ up at the people passing by. Some were stylish young ladies, who wore fashionable ________ and walked confidently in high heels. An uneasy feeling started to ________ in my chest. It got more unbearable with every second until I could deny it no longer; I was ________ of my mother.

We lived in a small but ________ apartment building that Mom chose to move to because she knew the schools there were good. We were in a high-class neighborhood, but as I examined the passers-by and then turned ________ eyes on Mom, I realized for the first time that we didn’t ________ there. I could see the heavy lines around Mom’s eyes and mouth, without fancy creams to _______ them away. Her eyes were tired from working long hours to make ends meet and her hair too gray for her age. My mom is nothing extraordinary, yet at that moment she ________ because she was just so plain.

My mind was ________ when Mom suddenly called out: my name. She was standing in the middle of a high-end store, holding a sweater that looked much too expensive. She said, “This will look good on you. Do you want it?” I almost agreed ________ and thoughtlessly. Then I took a closer look at the small, weary woman with a big smile ________ across her narrow face and a sweater in her hands, and my words ________ in my throat. She looked so tired all the time because she was busy working to provide for me. She didn’t wear jewelry or scented perfumes because she was just ________ with me. I was no longer ashamed of her, but of myself. “Do you want it?” My mom repeated. “No thanks.” I responded.

10 . On 20 December, in Newdale, a series of huge waves caused by an undersea earthquake raced across the ocean near Gold shore. Worse still, it ________ thousands dead. Gold shore Beach was the only local beach to ________ the disaster without any loss of life. A 10-year-old girl, Sabrina Andron, helped around 100 people escape danger with her   ________ of tsunamis (海啸).

The day began like any other on Gold shore Beach. People were walking, running or simply siting on the sandy beach, ________ the warm sea air and enjoying the soft ________ that brushed their hair. Sabrina was one of the happy tourists until she noticed something ________. “The water was like the bubbles (气泡) on the top of a beer,” she later explained. “It wasn’t ________ and it wasn’t going in and then out. It was just coming in and in and in.” It struck her that these were the ________ of an upcoming tsunami, which Sabrina had just learnt about in a Geography lesson.

Sabrina was ________, but she soon kept her head. She warned her parents of the ________, thought at first they just thought she was ________. However, Sabrina was certain that a terrible disaster was ________ and kept asking her parents to talk to a safety officer. To her great relief, the officer ________ realized the coming danger. The beach was rapidly cleared of people, just ________ the huge waves ________ into the coast.