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The European Commission plans to ask for £672 million at the
Edinburgh summit this week to promote high-definition television (HDTV)
in Europe. The plan could make a major contribution to global warming.

France wants the Commission to subsidise HDTV so that Europe’s HD-MAC
will become a world standard for HDTV, to the benefit of Europe’s electronics
companies. Europe’s prototype HDTV set, made by France’s state-owned electronics
firm Thomson, consumes 400 watts of power – four times that of a conventional
set.

With the market estimated at 500 million HDTV sets in the next 15 years,
such sets could consume an extra 164 terrawatt-hours of electricity a year
– more than half of Britain’s annual consumption. Most electricity still
comes from fossil fuels, and so generates the greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide.
The Community recently vowed to incorporate environmental considerations
into all its policies. ‘No one has even bothered to consider the environmental
impact of policies on HDTV,’ says Andrew Warren, of the European Association
for the Conservation of Energy. ‘They have not discussed putting any incentive
in place to make the sets more energy efficient.