Is a larger television necessarily more polluting?

It’s no longer a secret, Our electronic equipment pollute. But not all are housed in the same brand. If many factors come into account in the carbon compatibility of a device, the size of its screen is one of the characteristics that influence the most on its overall ecological footprint.

In A report published in April 2025the Télécom regulation authority (ARCEP) delivers a few figures to understand a little better how our TVs made their CO2 weights swell as they have made the size of their slab grow.

X6 consumption

If the trend has mainly seen on phones and televisions in recent years, the observation is final: “The share of digital equipment of large screen sizes progressed between 2021 and 2023 for all types of terminals with the exception of laptops“. Whether it’s tablets, monitors or other gadgets, the trend is exploding diagonals.

However, if we renew all these objects a little less, “This drop could be offset for all or part by an increase in the unit impact of equipment due to the increase in the size of the screens“, Note the independent authority. To establish a concrete scale, the latter is based, among other things, on figures from the environmental agency who became interested in the issue in September 2018.

On LCD displays, average consumption between a television of less than 33 inches and one of more than 70 inches is simply multiplied by 6, going from 25 Watts to 145 watts. The same goes for computer screens with the tiles of less than 23 inches which are three times more energy efficient than those exceeding 28 inches (13 watts against 40 watts exactly).

Paris-Caen or Paris-Rennes?

Unsurprisingly, larger televisions therefore consume more during their use phase. But the impact is not limited when you light the screen. According to ADEME, the production of LCD screens is in second place in the factors contributing the most to their carbon footprint (just after the electronic cards and components), even by excluding the use phase. The very production of a larger slab is more polluting.

To put it differently, your 70 inch TV arrives with a larger ecological debt than your 33 inch TV, even before being on for the first time. “”On the same product category, the use of larger products (for televisions, smartphones, tablets or screens) leads to greater impacts“, Harts Ademe.

A 30 to 40 inch TV is dragging a carbon footprint of just under 50 kg of CO2 equivalent, while more than 49 points to almost 75 kg of CO2 equivalent. To give an idea, this corresponds to 230 km in thermal car (a Paris-Caen) for the first against 345 km (a Paris-Rennes) for the second.

What about the OLED?

ADEME underlines, that said, a small feature in its calculation that will probably already have already guessed the most technophile: the impact of display technology and technical advances. “”It should be noted that the impacts of LCD screens have a high uncertainty linked to several factors: technological developments, localization of production in Asia and industrial secrets on manufacturing consumption“Explains the agency.

The OLED, which is gently democratized on televisions and generously on smartphones, consumes for example (with equal diagonal) a little less than the LCD. According to figures published by Engiein annual consumption, a 55 inch LCD will point to 164.2 kWh where an OLED panel of the same size will be limited to 13.4 kWh.

However, even if the optimization of technologies lowers consumption in the use phase, the size of OLED screens is on average higher and their more polluting production phase. Interviewed by Actu.fr in 2022the founder of the Greenit collective explained: “Producing a 45 -inch LCD screen represents 175 kg of CO2 and 200 m² of water. Making a 53 -inch OLED screen is 800 kg of CO2 and 3,540 m3 of water. We completely change their order of magnitude.“Even keeping an equal diagonal, the ditch is enormous.

So yes, a larger TV is more polluting, but largely because of its manufacture and less of its use. As with many electronic devices, the observation is the same: to reduce the carbon footprint, it is necessary to renew as little as possible. Buying a new TV because it consumes less than its old man does not have much sense from an ecological point of view.