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  3. Not Energy Efficient Refrigerators Each year millions of Americans with old, inefficient refrigerators in their kitchens buy

Not Energy Efficient Refrigerators Each year millions of Americans with old, inefficient refrigerators in their kitchens buy

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问题                     Not Energy Efficient Refrigerators
    Each year millions of Americans with old, inefficient refrigerators in their kitchens buy new, energy saving ones. That may sound like an efficiency boon, but what’s vexing efficiency advocates is that an increasing number of consumers don’t actually get rid of the old fridge. Instead, they move it to another area of the house and keep using it— increasing their energy usage over all.
    America’s secondary-fridge trend is highlighted in "Energy Vision 2010:Towards a More Energy Efficient World", a new report by the World Economic Forum and HIS Cambridge Energy Research Associates. The report notes that while the average refrigerator in the United States uses three-quarters less energy than in 1975, despite being 20 percent larger, "the number of U. S. households with two or more refrigerators has increased, and the secondary refrigerators are typically older and less efficient than the primary models". Every year about 10 percent of households that purchase new refriger- ators keep their old units,a practice that is adding as many as one million secondary units to homes annually.
    Jennifer Thome Amann, buildings program director at the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy, explained that secondary units are often kept for convenience in larger homes and that owners aren’t always aware of how much a "beer and deer" fridge as they’re called in parts of the country where hunting is popular, can cost them. " You’re not saving any money on efficiency if you’re keeping that old one plugged in," she said.
    Unplugging the 29. 6 million secondary units nationwide that are candidates for retirement would save 25 million megawatt hours of electricity,or about $ 2.8 billion,the energy department study noted. Individual owners could save from $ 420 to $ 750 in energy costs over the lifetime of an older unit by retiring it, depending on the age of the unit. Some utilities and state agencies have launched programs that offer financial incentives and free pick-up services to entice customers to give up secondary fridges. And some will not issue rebates to purchasers of new energy efficient refrigerators unless they provide proof that their old one was recycled.
    "This doesn’t mean the efficiency efforts have been in vain or were not worth undertaking," she added, "it means that we should continue improving efficiency and undertake a series of parallel efforts to recycle old units, discourage upsizing and measure the right things if we want to turn absolute consumption downward."
What does the author try to indicate in the first paragraph?
选项 A、In American people prefer new energy saving refrigerators to old ones.
B、More and more consumers in America don’t actually get rid of their old fridges.
C、American people like to put inefficient refrigerators in their kitchens after buying new ones.
D、Keeping inefficient refrigerators leads to more energy usage rather than saving it.
答案D
解析 推理判断题。题目考查对第1段的综合概括。开篇作者提到很多美国家庭购买节能新冰箱，这似乎是件好事儿，随后话锋一转，提到：but what’s vexing efficiency advocates is that．．．don’t actually get rid of the old fridge．．．increasing their energy usage over all．可知，作者意在指出旧冰箱的保留增加了能耗。[D]项表达的正是此意。
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