IEA: Love Affair With Gadgets Squeezing Power Supply

The rapidly growing number of televisions, laptops and other electronic gadgets in households is putting a growing strain on electricity supplies and jeopardizing efforts to cut carbon emissions, the International Energy Agency said Wednesday.

Without new policies by governments and gadget-makers to improve the energy efficiency of electronic devices “efforts to increase energy security” will be jeopardized, the Paris-based agency said in a new study.
Electronic devices account for 15% of household electricity consumption, but that percentage is rising fast, said the IEA, which acts as an adviser to most of the world’s biggest energy-consuming nations.

The warning highlights the problem the world faces in meeting rising energy needs while limiting the effects of global climate change as more of the world’s population either escapes poverty or gains even more wealth and scoops up all sorts of devices that require an energy source.

The number of people globally using a personal computer is expected to top 1 billion by the end of the year for the first time, the IEA said.

Without new policies, the amount of energy sucked up by such gadgets as the iPhone 3G, Apple Inc.’s (AAPL) popular portable media player that acts as a mobile phone and entertainment center, will triple by 2030 to 1,700 terawatt hours of electricity.

CNN