As the politicians made clear at last month’s COP26 (United Nations Climate Change

Conference), in Glasgow, now is the time to act on climate change. We need to cut carbon emissions, and knowing this, it is easy to be bleak: Can we really remake society to be much greener than it is now?

Strangely, I’m feeling optimistic. Especially compared to if you’d asked me a few years ago. And that’s mostly because of one factor: Batteries. It isn’t obvious but over the last decade or so, just as we’ve watched our computers get faster and screens get thinner, batteries have dramatically improved too.

According to the European Patent Office, the number of battery patents filed grew by an average of 14 per cent every year between 2005 and 2018, which means battery innovation is exploding. Energy storage is getting better, as more companies are discovering new chemistry and process to make them work more efficiently.

And the results of their work are astonishing. According to Bloomberg, energy density—the amount of power that can be stored in the same sized battery—has tripled in the last decade. And the cost of batteries has dramatically fallen too.

Today, battery power per kilowatt hour costs around only 10 per cent of what it did a decade ago. And the expectation is that the costs will continue to fall, both as battery chemistry improves and because manufacturing on a massive scale makes the production of individual batteries cheaper.

Given how much technology has improved batteries over the last decade, I can’t help but be strangely optimistic about the future. Batteries may not be as flashy as phones, rockets or other new technologies. But when it comes to technology to fight climate change, they’re definitely leading the charge.

【小题1】Which is closest in meaning to “bleak ”in Paragraph 1?

A．Positive.

B．Negative.

C．Neutral.

D．Indifferent.

【小题2】Why are costs of batteries expected to continue to decline?

A．Because the storage of a battery has increased greatly.

B．Because our computer technology is developing very fast.

C．Because the chemical properties of the battery are improved.

D．Because battery chemistry and production are advancing.

【小题3】How does the author mainly state the improvement of batteries?

A．By quotation.

B．By experiment.

C．By comparison.

D．By classification.

【小题4】What is the text mainly about?

A．How battery technology can fight climate change.

B．How we can make the society greener than now.

C．What makes the battery industry develop quickly.

D．Why batteries are becoming cheaper and more efficient.