Flat Screen TVs Worse For Climate Than a Big Coal Plant
by Lloyd Alter, Toronto on 07. 3.08
And not just because of all the people sitting there using electricity and eating corn chips. 4,000 tons of nitrogen triflouride is used each year in the production of flat screen TVs and monitors. Michael Prathner of the Environment Institute of the University of California in Irvine claims that the stuff is 17,000 times as potent a greenhouse gas as carbon dioxide, and writes in Geophysical Research Letters that it has "a potential greenhouse impact larger than that of the industrialised nations' emissions of perflourocarbons (PFCs) or sulfur hexaflouride (SF6), or even that of the world's largest coal-fired power plants". It survives in the atmosphere for 550 years, and if this year's supply got out, it would be equivalent to 67 million tonnes of CO2.
''Nitrogen trifluoride can be called the missing greenhouse gas. It is a synthetic chemical produced in industrial quantities, it is not included in the Kyoto basket of greenhouse gases, or in national reporting under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change,'' Professor Prather said in the Sentinel.
''Nitrogen trifluoride can be called the missing greenhouse gas. It is a synthetic chemical produced in industrial quantities, it is not included in the Kyoto basket of greenhouse gases, or in national reporting under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change,'' Professor Prather said in the Sentinel.
The industry says that only 2% of it gets out, but Prather doesn't believe them. The stuff isn't even indispensable; Toshiba avoids using it. Another good reason not to watch TV. ::Guardian and ::Sentinel
Plasma and LCD TVs:
Can a Flat Panel TV be Green?
Plasma TVs Suck (Electricity)
Lifehacker Tip: Buy the Right Size TV
Top Energy Efficient Telelvisions
Televisions Will Consume More Energy Than a Fridge
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You say "Flat Screen" but Plasma, LCD and Flat CRT TV's are three very different technologies. Which one(s) are we talking about? Is this chemical used the the manufacturing of old CRT TVs too?
Its not in the "Kyoto basket of greenhouse gases" because of lobbying by various industrial interests.
When and if Kyoto comes back to life it is absolutely essential that we keep our eyes on those back door efforts and see too it that the signatories pull all the GHGs into the basket.
Nobody gets off the hook this time.
That's it... my old non-flat screen telly is staying put.
More like, the entirety of the TV industry is equal to or slightly worse than the amount one or two coal plants put out. Your single TV is not the problem, it's the other 1,999 people that bought TVs too :p
Seriously. Wich Technology of "FLAT SCREEN" is it that uses it? I am asking again cause it has not been addressed from the first inquiry.
Flat CRT
Plasma
LCD
Can we get the Details here? Or is this just a lobbie to kill the sales of the newer, more effecient Technologies?
We're all going to die because rich fcuks want to eat pizza and let their kids watch Barney in High Definition. Don't people read anymore?
This is a very misleading title. Accurate, but misleading nonetheless. ALL the flat-screen tv's produced are equivalent to about 1 coal power plant, and we already know how to fix the process without significantly driving up the price of the product. The title sounds like EACH flat screen TV was equivalent to a coal plant, which really caught my eye because I knew it couldn't be right.
And you mention the electricity use as a problem, but if the electricity didn't come from coal but from renewables or nuclear, it wouldn't be a problem, either. Yes, we should clearly label NF3 a GHG, because it is. But by no means should we be comparing it's environmental impact to that of world coal use.
Anthony I think you're confused. Not only is it bad enough that these energy inefficient idiot boxes are soaking up precious natural resources, but they create thousands of pounds of a GHG which is 17,000 times more diabolical than cO2. Furthermore thousands of tons of this stuff is created in the production of these idiot boxes. "4000 tons of nitrogen triflouride is used each year in the production of flat screen TVs and monitors.
note that around 97% of the gas is claimed to be destroyed...
also that this is not the only ghg not on the kyoto list
You also have to notice that an LCD consume much less power than a CRT, so you need to take into the account of GHG emissions the whole energy consumed during the monitor lifetime.
I'm gonna echo Pat and RW in asking—with waning patience—which flat-screen technology are we discussing here?
Pat and RW: I've just been doing a bit of digging around and found out that NF3 is used to clean the machine used to coat CRT screens with phosphors: flat or not doesn't seem to have any bearing on its use. Avoiding CRT won't steer you clear of the stuff though as the same manufacturing technique is used to put the liquid crystal into an LCD screen and it's also used in the manufacture of plasma tv's.
According to Google, both plasma and LCD television production involves nitrogen triflouride.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/07/03/2293369.htm?section=justin
I wonder how much CO2 is saved due to the lower power requirements of LCD televisions compared to tube based televisions? And "one big coal plant" seems like a lot, but it's a drop in the bucket. There's about 3000 coal power plants in the world, so we're really talking about .03% of the total GHG output of the coal power industry. Even if it's a Big coal plant, I don't buy the idea that it's any higher than .1% of the total.
Seriously, there are much bigger problems to worry about than this. Support waste heat use and co-generation, to put some of that wasted 65% to work!
Here is an idea:
Lets all sit at our flat screen computer monitors and rail about people watching TV on a flat screen. TV is for idiots but the internets are for the intelligentsia?
And a big BUMP for the question: exactly what kind of screens are we talking about???
I'd like to echo the sentiments of others by asking WHICH kind of flat screen we're talking about here. Do OLED displays have a similar problem? And is the emission of the nitrogen triflouride offset by the savings in electricity?
Sensationalist reporting like this doesn't help people make better choices. It just makes environmentalists look like Chicken Little.
@Pat, RW, and Sheepguy
The Sentinel article (linked) claims the screens in question are the kind used in TVs and laptops, which implies that this chemical is used in LCDs.
A quick search for "nitrogen trifluoride" shows a C-net news article explicitly mentioning its use in LCD's, semiconductors, and synthetic diamonds.
If you're really this impatient for details, why not look it up?
Is this a problem at disposal, do you know - or just in manufacture of the TVs?
Jeremy said:
...NF3 is used to clean the machine used to coat CRT screens with phosphors: flat or not doesn't seem to have any bearing on its use. Avoiding CRT won't steer you clear of the stuff though as the same manufacturing technique is used to put the liquid crystal into an LCD screen and it's also used in the manufacture of plasma tv's.