The Carbon Footprint of Your Devices

TVs and desktops are responsible for particularly high levels of greenhouse gas emissions in comparison to other electronic devices. When looking at not only the emissions created through the production of such items, but also their usage throughout their lifetime, then these two are responsible for far higher levels of GHGs than laptops, tablets and smartphones.

Data from the Digital Economy Report 2024 published by the UN Trade and Development shows that TVs are responsible for around 595 kg of CO2 equivalent per device during their use phase, compared to 545 kg CO2e for desktops, 85 kg CO2e for laptops, 20 kg CO2e for tablets and 8 kg CO2e for smartphones. When looking at the total emissions produced per item though, then desktops are the worst offenders of the analyzed devices with 948 kg of CO2e produced per device, versus 897 kg of CO2e for TVs.

That isn’t to say that laptops, tablets and smartphones don’t create significant sums of emissions. Even though the emissions generated through the production and use of smartphones is comparatively low per item, when multiplied by the sheer number of smartphones that exist in the world, it becomes a hefty problem - both in terms of the production phase and the waste generation at the end of life. Over the last decade, smartphones, personal computers and tablets have been the most popular digital devices, with smartphone shipments forecast to reach almost 1.3 billion units by 2027, according to the report.

As this chart also shows, another trend highlighted in the data is that where mains powered devices produce particularly high emissions throughout their use phase, for battery powered devices such as laptops, tablets and smartphones, it's the production phase that generates the higher share of their emissions.