Flat screen TVs: giving the world's climate a roasting?

by Stephen Withers

Friday, 04 July 2008

Page 1 of 3 ! Is that shiny new LCD or plasma TV in your house a major contributor to global warming? A new research paper is making a shocking claim that's nothing to do with power consumption, but some critics think it's just some outrageous scaremongering and nary but a load of hot air! Flat screen TVs of the LCD and plasma variety are still one of the most desired consumer items in the 21st century, with their thin profiles, huge screen sizes and high-definition capabilities. But the manufacture of these screens uses a particular gas that - if a new research paper is to be believed - has a worse impact that coal fired power stations. That's a very serious claim that should be urgently investigated. The gas concerned is nitrogen trifluoride (NF3), used by the electronics industry for certain cleaning and etching processes in the production of semiconductors and flat screens. So even if you buy a CRT TV, NF3 was probably used to make the chips inside it. And think of all those other electronic items you've bought in the last few years. The research paper in question was written by Michael Prather and Juno Hsu and published in the American Geophysical Union's Geophysical Research Letters. It fingers NF3 as "the missing greenhouse gas." Why? Because it has a higher global warming potential that most of the gases covered by the Kyoto protocol - including the nasty perfluorocarbons (PFCs) that NF3 was intended to replace! The reduction in the use of PFCs has therefore been accompanied by increased use of NF3, and the expected production of NF3 for 2008 is equivalent in its effect to 67 million tonnes of carbon dioxide. That sounds a lot - but is it? Page 2 might provide a surprise for you! << First page <   1 2 3 Next page > Last page - Post your comment >>

 

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