Your smartphone is killing the Earth

Aside from the potentially toxic chemicals and environmentally-unfriendly plastics used in the manufacturing of cellphones, the power-hungry smartphone in your pocket may be helping to kill our beautiful planet. Chemicals can be reformulated and plastics can be recycled, but the battery power that keeps your smartphone chugging along has to come from somewhere – a planet-polluting power plant.

In fact, the growing demand for electrical power from mobile gadgets like smartphones has prompted one energy watchdog to issue a warning. The International Energy Agency, based in Paris, estimates that France will see their energy consumption sky-rocketing to 1,700 terawatt hours by 2030 – that’s a three-fold increase in energy demand that would put France’s power requirement on par with what we see in Japan and the US combined.

The problem with all this electrical demand is that humans produce a lot of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide. At the current rate, if nothing is done to curb the increasing demand for electricity from gadgets like smartphones, the world will see a doubling of carbon dioxide emissions by 2030.

“This will jeopardize efforts to increase energy security and reduce the emission of greenhouse gases” according to the International Energy Agency.

One possible solution would be to increase energy efficiency of devices. There’s also a strong argument for pursuing alternative energy sources for mobile phones – like body heat, motion or even our own voices. And, as long as we’re being progressive here, we’d like to see smartphones of the future adjusting their power-draw based on the features being used. If you’re a light user, the smartphone could put the brakes on the processor, allowing you to go longer in between battery charges. Heavy users might benefit from some sort of “hibernate” mode that saves electricity during off-peak hours or when the smartphone has been idle for a set period of time.

In the end, it’s clear that something needs to be done. While we’ll no doubt keep going about our lives and taking full advantage of smartphones, like the just-announced Palm Pre, it’s good to know that somebody is at least thinking about the problem.

[Via: Chron]