Efficiency improvement opportunities for personal computer monitors: implications for market transformation programs

Abstract

Displays account for a significant portion of electricity consumed in personal computer (PC) use, and global PC monitor shipments are expected to continue to increase. We assess the market trends in the energy efficiency of PC monitors that are likely to occur without any additional policy intervention and estimate that PC monitor efficiency will likely improve by over 40 % by 2015 with saving potential of 4.5 TWh per year in 2015, compared to today's technology. We discuss various energyefficiency improvement options and evaluate the cost-effectiveness of three of them, at least one of which improves efficiency by at least 20 % cost effectively beyond the ongoing market trends. We assess the potential for further improving efficiency taking into account the recent development of universal serial bus-powered liquid crystal display monitors and find that the current technology available and deployed in them has the potential to deeply and cost effectively reduce energy consumption by as much as 50 %. We provide insights for policies and programs that can be used to accelerate the adoption of efficient technologies to further capture global energy saving potential from PC monitors which we estimate to be 9.2 TWh per year in 2015.

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“…Recently LED backlit LCDs were assessed to be at least 20-30% more efficient than the conventional CCFL backlit LCDs that are currently the least expensive TV technology. LED backlit LCDs have been expected to capture nearly the full backlighting market by 2016 (Park et al, 2011(Park et al, , 2013a(Park et al, , 2013b(Park et al, , 2014. Further, technologies such as efficient optical films can improve TV efficiency by more than 20% at incremental manufacturing costs less than $5 for small sized TVs.…”

“…expected to have several additional advantages in terms of energy efficiency and are more applicable to off-grid areas relative to conventional AC TVs (Park et al, 2013a;Park et al, 2013b). The Global Lighting and Energy Access Partnership (Global LEAP) Awards tested a number of DC TVs designed for use off-grid to identify the world's highest quality, most energyefficient, and affordable off-grid TV (Global LEAP Awards, 2014).…”