A few months ago I wrote about Nokia and a host of other organizations starting a green technology initiative, as a response to the growing issue of power usage by new technologies. Now a new report has been issued looking at future demand for electronics in Britain, and the energy demand these purchases will create.

In the past 10 years, according to the report from the Energy Savings Trust (EST), energy demand from home electronics has risen by 47%. In the next five years, it will increase by 82%, says the EST.

In the next six months alone, the EST forecasts UK consumers will buy 2.5 million mobile phones, 1.25 million MP3 players, and 2.25 million TVs. The latter category bucks the normal trend toward lower power consumption per device as plasma screen TVs consume up to four times the power of a conventional cathode-ray TV.

One major concern is the typical behavior of leaving devices plugged in overnight to charge, laptops on all night (guilty on 3 counts myself) or leaving TVs on standby, which consumes additional power while providing no real benefit in most cases.

On a remotely related note, Nick Carr recently calculated that the average Second Life avatar has a carbon footprint just slightly larger than an actual Brazilian.

So, wherever you are, give a thought to the power needs and carbon impact of increased technology ownership. I will if you will.