The air conditioner is nearly 100 years old, but the technology is essentially the same as it used to be. Although it has made our lives easier and more comfortable, this all comes at a cost. The cooling of our air is responsible for 10% of the planet’s electricity consumption. And as the world heats, demand for air conditioners will continue to grow. This, in turn, will increase the influence that cooling machines have on the climate, thus warming the Earth further and creating a vicious cycle.

The current technology is unsustainable. That’s why a group led by RMI, a nonprofit environmental research organization, has launched the Global Cooling Prize, a $1-million competition to design of the next generation of air cooling systems. The proposed designs employ a wide range of technologies. Barocal, a Cambridge University startup, uses solid-state cooling technologies instead of traditional liquid refrigerants (制冷剂) that may leak out over time. Meanwhile, a proposal from Kraton, a Texan chemical engineering company, simply uses water, completely doing away with the main mechanical component of air conditioners, the compressor, to make the design more affordable. Others focus on the limitations of current air conditioning units, such as the lack of control over both temperature and humidity (湿度) at the same time. The design proposed by US startup M2 Thermal Solutions allows users to set both a specific temperature and the level of humidity in a room.

It’s difficult to tell what these proposed new machines will look like before the actual machines are built, but it’s arguable that they will create something new, as most of the shortlisted designs are based on fundamentally different technology compared to traditional devices.

The overall winner, announced in November 2021, will be awarded $1 million in prize money. This is when the real challenge begins: convincing the world that traditional air conditioners need replacing. “The current industry is worth more than $100 billion and has a well-established value chain from manufacturing (生产) to distribution to after-sales support,” said Vijay Mhetar, Kraton’s senior vice president. “Any new design will need to have minimum barriers for customer adoption and have a similar supply chain established.”

【小题1】What does the underlined word “vicious” in Paragraph 1 probably mean?

A．Slow.	B．Negative.
C．Natural.	D．Efficient.

【小题2】What will Kraton apply to its new design?

A．Water instead of a compressor.

B．Solid-state cooling technologies.

C．Recycled liquid refrigerants.

D．Control over humidity.

【小题3】What does Vijay Mhetar expect of the new design?

A．It must be multifunctional.

B．It must be cheap and energy-saving.

C．It should have an entire service system.

D．It should offer more choices to customers.

【小题4】What’s the author’s main purpose in writing the text?

A．To talk about the history of air conditioning.

B．To ask people to reduce air conditioning use.

C．To show the disadvantages of air conditioners.

D．To introduce a contest for new air conditioners.