DETROIT – Consumers may see their energy bills spike if they get a hot-selling item this Christmas.
New ultra-high-definition, or 4K, televisions display four times the resolution of current high-definition TVs, but researchers say they use a lot more power.
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According to the Natural Resources Defense Council, UHD TVs use 30 percent more energy than standard HDTVs of the same size.
These televisions have 8 million more pixels to create such vivid images, using back-lights that are brighter but also use more energy.
With an estimated 300 million televisions installed in the U.S. – almost one per person – if every one was replaced with a 4K TV, there would be $1 billion in additional annual costs to consumers to operate their televisions. This would add 5 million extra metric tons of carbon dioxide pollution emitted annually from the additional electricity use, according to the NRDC.
More information can be found at the NRCD’s website.