Gaggle of gadgets grounds for global gasp

Home electronics jacking up power consumption

Today, more than one billion people are using personal computers worldwide; two billion have television sets and more than three billion are gabbing on their mobile phones. And the number of chargers for all those cell phones? Around 6 billion. That’s almost the entire global population. 

Currently, 15% of household electricity consumption is used to keep those cell phones charged and those TVs and computers running. With these devices becoming an ever-increasing part of our world and that technology improving rapidly, this gadget gaggle is expected to triple the energy consumption rate over the next 20 years. 

The International Energy Agency is calling on governments to legislate more energy-efficient gadgets. It predicts that 1,700 terawatt hours will be consumed by 2030, if current consumption is not curbed. Not only would that cost an estimated $200 billion in electricity bills, it is equivalent to the current combined total residential electricity consumption of the United States and Japan.

But what about all our technology improvements? Any efficiency progress that has been made over the last few years has mostly been cancelled out by the high demand for advanced devices that suck more power.

Canada is already leading the charge with some impressive appliance and electronic standards. The EnerGuide and Energy Star programs publish the names of the most energy-efficient brands and force appliance manufacturers to post their power-use ratings.

Simply using the best available technology would slow growth in consumption to less than 1 per cent a year through 2030.

Now that’s worth phoning home about.