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  3. The UK government’s decision to shutter plans to build the world’s first tidal lagoon off Swansea Bay is a hard blow for Wales.

The UK government’s decision to shutter plans to build the world’s first tidal lagoon off Swansea Bay is a hard blow for Wales.

admin2022-04-20  48
问题     The UK government’s decision to shutter plans to build the world’s first tidal lagoon off Swansea Bay is a hard blow for Wales. The tidal lagoon project, had it gone ahead, was expected to create 2,200 jobs, plus more in the supply chain. These are the kinds of jobs that Wales, so damaged by steel and coal closures, needs. But the business secretary, Greg Clark, has decided the country can’t have them because they would be too expensive.
    Welsh politicians have reacted with understandable fury to Mr Clark’s announcement, which comes almost exactly 12 months after the government abandoned plans to electrify the railway from Cardiff to Swansea, and just a day after Member of Parliament (MPs) voted to press ahead with another expensive infrastructure project: a third runway at Heathrow.
    There are some rational reasons to approve of this week’s decision, while regretting its consequences. No one, including the Tidal Lagoon Power company, denied that the electricity produced off the Welsh coast would have cost more than the cheapest renewables. The most recent government auctions saw offshore wind schemes win contracts at record lows of￡,57. 50 per megawatt hour, meaning they are within a few pounds of being subsidy-free.
    But cost is not the only consideration. Otherwise, the government would never have gone ahead with the hugely expensive, risky and uncertain Hinkley Point C nuclear power station. Nor would it have cut subsidies for solar power and onshore wind, as it did in 2015. Those decisions—particularly the promise to curb onshore wind, as the Conservatives did in their 2015 manifesto, despite poll after poll showing that a majority of the public prefers wind and solar to nuclear—were ideological.
    In a City speech this March, Mr Clark praised business for putting "evidence before ideology". It is welcome that the secretary of state says this is his own approach. Too many of his Conservative colleagues remain too strongly attached to fossil fuels, including the prospect of a whole new shale gas industry. As the price of renewables continues to fall, they will surely lose the argument. With Mr Clark in charge, the hope is that onshore wind and solar subsidies may soon return—though too late for UK companies that could have developed and profited from the technology had we not given up on it long before the renewables boom.
    Yet the government is planning more nuclear power stations, including one in Wales.
    Different rules seem to apply for different technologies. It looks like a Tory government in Westminster snubbed Welsh Labour’s pet project. Backers of the tidal project felt shut out by ministers. Wave energy lobbyists perhaps don’t have the firepower in Whitehall that others can muster. Mr Clark might have relied on the evidence to make a tough call not to back a new, green technology. But it’s hard to shake off the impression that the decision was one rooted in the partisan politics of self-interest.
According to the first two paragraphs, the tidal power project is believed________.
选项 A、to matter more than Heathrow project
B、to be opposed by Welsh politicians
C、to bring back many jobs in Wales
D、to conflict with Welsh railway plans
答案C
解析 本题是细节题。根据题干定位至前两段。首段指出，潮汐项目得以开展的话，预计将产生两千多个岗位，供应链岗位会更多。而这些岗位是因钢铁煤矿关闭而受重创的威尔士所需要的。可知，该项目会使威尔士就业情况好转。故答案选C。A项“比希思罗工程更重要”和D项“与威尔士的铁路规划相冲突”都是在解释第二段中提到的“威尔士政客不满政府决议的原因”，其中，“更重要”和“相冲突”在文中并未提及，故均排除；B项“会被威尔士政客反对”是将第二段首句提到的“政客抗议决议”误读为他们反对潮汐项目，故排除。
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