Power alarm over home electronics

"All told, between 5 and 10 per cent of electricity used in the average Canadian home is consumed by appliances and home electronics while the devices are on standby, Natural Resources Canada estimates. In some cases, the gadget actually needs to be unplugged to cut the power use.

"Ottawa now plans to force the industry to reduce the standby power needs of a wide range of appliances and home electronics – first issuing regulations by 2010 to meet California standards which are the toughest in the United States, and then regulating a one-watt standby mode in 2013.

"Power usage of electronics on standby currently ranges from five watts to 25.

"In its report yesterday, the International Energy Agency said the boom in electronics threatens to undermine efforts to reduce residential power demand and cut greenhouse gas emissions."

More at globeandmail.com: Power alarm over home electronics

[Important Notice]

Manufacturing LCD Screens - Worse than Coal?

A recent study says that nitrogen trifluoride, a chemical that is used in manufacturing LCD screens and semiconductors, is a very powerful greenhouse gas, which "... could cause more global warming than coal-fired power plants...." This years' emissions of nitrogen trifluoride would equal all the global-warming emissions of Australia, for example. But

"...nitrogen trifluoride and some dozen other gases [were not included in the Kyoto Protocol], in part because they weren't produced at a scale large enough to cause significant harm."
[...]
"However, LCD televisions are often painted as eco-friendly because they consume less power than plasma and older rear-projection sets."

(Source: http://news.cnet.com/8301-11128_3-9983744-54.html?tag=cd.blog. Accessed: 2008-07-05. Archived by WebCite^® at http://www.webcitation.org/5Z4wBRlHT)

It would be interesting to find out how much net global warming is caused by making LCD screens, when you take the global savings from burning less coal for electricity into account.

Also, as some of the comments to the cnet story suggest, it might be easier to control industrial emissions of a gas (e.g. nitrogen trifluoride) that is used in a well-defined number of factories than emissions at millions of point sources that are owned by millions of people and companies (as in CO2).

I'd love to dig deeper into this (starting with finding the original study) when I have the time.

In any event, perhaps it's time to review the list of gases under Kyoto or at least the next international agreement after Kyoto.

[Disclosure: This blog is written using an LCD screen. I also use a couple of LCD screens for work (I telecommute full-time). Our TV is a modest-sized CRT (relatively recent model, Energy Star compliant). All of these devices are bulfrogpowered with renewable electricity as mentioned in the sidebar on the right.]

[Important Notice]

Discuss this on your own Blogger blog! Click here for a permalink in the Address Bar > highlight any text for quoting > click BlogThis!