THE environment will pay a hefty price for the boom in digital television. Generating the power to run TVs and other video devices already dumps 7 million tonnes of carbon dioxide a year into the atmosphere in the UK alone. And this is expected to triple over the next 10 years.
The hike will come as more people add the set-top box needed to view digital TV to their home entertainment system. The warning came on 3 June from the Energy Saving Trust, a green campaign group. It says the biggest waste comes in standby mode. Set-top boxes consume around 9 watts while on, but this only drops to 7 watts on standby.
The UK leads the world in conversion to digital TV, with 53 per cent of homes now on digital. But Europe and Australia are fast catching up. China wants to switch off all analogue TV before the Beijing Olympics in 2008, putting another billion digital receivers into use.
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Cost-cutting is part of the problem, according to Bob Harrison, a scientific adviser at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, which supplied the figures to EST. He says that while manufacturers of analogue VCRs have reduced their standby power from 8 watts to 3 watts over the past decade, standby energy consumption of digital set-top boxes is actually going up because makers use cheap, inefficient components to keep prices low.
鈥淭his is knocking all the energy-saving predictions for six,鈥� says Harrison. 鈥淭here will be a major spike in CO2 emission when China switches off analogue.鈥�