Energy up in Smoke > Small Hits
Energy up in Smoke > Small Hits
Assorted notes on topical issues in the discussion of sustainable cannabis cultivation
INDEX
March 14, 2025 - These days, the multiple-harvest argument in favor of indoor production seems to have become a bit of a red herring given the severe oversupply situation in many parts of the country (and Canada) [see here, here, and here]. More than a quarter of Canada’s production was destroyed last year thanks to overproduction.
April 6, 2023 - There is a snake in the windowless garden. Efforts to advance environmental justice – the marriage of civil rights and environmental protection – are flowering. Billions in federal grants are imminent, buoying a raft of Biden-administration initiatives. Social justice is also making headway; thirty-one states have decriminalized cannabis, legitimizing a $100 billion industry (legal and illicit) and slowing outsized incarceration rates for marginalized and lower-income people. Yet, unlike sustainable sungrown cannabis, indoor factory farms – which now produce about 60% of all US cannabis – disproportionately inflict environmental harms on disadvantaged workers and surrounding communities. It’s an inconvenient truth for an industry plagued by lackluster performance, limited transparency, and greenwashing. Legal indoor operations in our cities are out of sight and out of mind, yet they impact far more people than does the oft-photographed environmental damage from illicit “guerilla grows” in unpopulated forestlands. More... [top]
March 19, 2023 - We've all seen the headlines about the potential shortages of the critical mineral lithium, the common for making the batteries that a clean grid will need to store solar and wind power at night, running our electric vehicles, etc. A related, but quite different headline talks about how much lithium is being thrown in to landfills. From what, you ask? Vape pens. They're starting fires in the dumps, too. It's not clear how many are tobacco vs cannabis, but irrespective of that, this is an upside-down situation, especially given the 'save-the-earth' values with which so many cannabis users align themselves. Yes, some companies are making recyclable vape pens now, but with something like only 5% of plastics being recycled overall, one can't rest easy that these will in fact be recycled. [top]
March 19, 2023 - Prohibition was previously blamed for the environmental impacts of cannabis cultivation, but the reality is far more complicated (Vitiello 2016). Indeed, owing to the lack of coordination between cannabis policy and environmental policy, decisions are inadvertently being made in the post-prohibition era that are compounding the energy problem. Because "drug policy" is so divorced from "environmental policy", there are a host of biases in the regulatory landscape that inadvertently result in cannabis cultivation using more energy and thus releasing more greenhouse gas emissions than need be.
One group of polices explicitly bias the market towards indoor over outdoor cultivation:
Zoning and Planning Biases
Prohibitions against outdoor cultivation - Many municipalities (including the county hosting California's capitol) and even some states prohibit outdoor cultivation but allow indoor cultivation. Some have required that cannabis operations be co-located with dispensaries, a defacto mandate to grow indoors.
... and in some cases outdoor cultivation may be allowed commercially but home cultivation is restricted to indoors. Examples have included Nevada and Rhode Island and Colorado. This even occurs in parts of California.
Prohibitions against home cultivation - The latest assessment finds that home cultivation results in about half the carbon footprint of industrial cultivation. Washington state and other jurisdictions forbid home cultivation.
Preferential license fees - Licensing with fees assessed on a per-square-foot basis or stipulating equal limits to the allowable cultivation area for indoor and outdoor cultivation, strongly bias choices towards high-density, energy intensive indoor operations where more crops can be produced each year.
Zoning biases - For example, the Coachella Valley in southern California has become a major hub of production due to the absence of caps on facility size, local efforts to promote the industry, and a generally permissive regulatory environment.
Subsidies
Subsidized grants for indoor growers - Good public policy has often included financial incentives for energy efficiency (rebates, tax credits, etc.). However, in the case of indoor cannabis cultivation, far greater energy savings can be obtained by shifting to outdoor cultivation, but utilities never incentivize this best practice.
Subsidized energy prices - in some areas, indoor "factory farm" cultivators receive the historically low, subsidized electricity prices enjoyed by traditional outdoor farmers. Subsidies of this sort to indoor growers make them more competitive against outdoor growers while artificially suppressing the profitability of making energy efficiency improvements or investment in renewable energy supply.
Failed efforts to convert illicit growers to legal growers - Localities that thwart local implementation of state laws reinforce illicit-market activity. For example, one-third of California local governments have banned most if not all cannabis-related business activities. Even in areas where it is allowed, the permitting process has proven highly onerous. Legal outdoor growers who revert to the illicit market sometimes convert to secretive indoor operations using highly polluting diesel generators.
Increased transport energy - In the California, for example regulations typically dictate that the product be transported at least four times between the point of cultivation and the point of consumption: from farm to processors, to distributors, and to dispensaries. Retail consumers then transport the final product from the dispensary. The amounts transported become progressively smaller along the supply chain, which multiplies the amount of embodied transport energy per unit weight.
Another group of policies has equally adverse impact for indoor and outdoor cultivators.
Prohibitions on recycling cannabis product packaging in some states.
A poor information environment for consumers - Among the fundamental preconditions for “perfect functioning” of markets is a vibrant information environment for all actors so that rational decisions are made. Unfortunately, energy-relevant information in the cannabis industry is often missing, or, at best, incomplete or incorrect. For example, there is no carbon-footprint labeling on products.
Potentially excessive mandatory product testing - Tainted cannabis products must be destroyed, thus entailing all associated energy to be reallocated to materials that pass testing. The safety thresholds stipulated by the regulations are not necessarily based on scientific study, and are more stringent than with standards for many other consumer products.
Restrictions on interstate commerce - A comparison of electricity use per unit yield in seven states found a variation of 3.4-fold and that for greenhouse-gas emissions of 26-fold, and this did not include the full range of climate severity or power plant emissions rates seen across the whole country. That said, some people within the industry also prefer not to see interstate commerce opened up.
Interdiction - All interdicted cannabis has a carbon footprint, tracing from its cultivation and other processes up to that point. For carbon-accounting purposes, those emissions must be allocated to the products that ultimately reach consumers.
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February 20, 2023 - The question of relative “quality” of indoor- versus outdoor-grown cannabis is often invoked by indoor cultivators seeking to argue that their method is superior and in some sense “essential” for humanity. It’s an important question (to me, anyway) because it is usually the first reason given for why cannabis “needs to be” grown in energy-intensive indoor factory farms… Turns out the answer is not cut-and-dried. More ... [top]
February 10, 2023 - It’s fashionable to describe the odor of uncombusted cannabis as “skunky”. While beauty is in the nose of the beholder, underlying the bouquet of a nice dank-smelling bud are volatile organic compounds, known by geeks as VOCs and smokers as "terps". They are not good news. More... [top]
December 12, 2022 - Growing cannabis indoors is widely claimed to be less water- and land-use-intensive than sungrown. However, these claims are based on an “apples-and-oranges” comparison of highly optimized indoor production methods to much cruder outdoor methods representing typical rather than best practices. When best outdoor practices are considered – utilizing compost-enriched soils with high water retention properties together with intensive plantings to minimize evaporation – outdoor cultivation can readily be more water- and land-efficient than indoor practices. Water use intensity (gallons of water per pound of marketable flower) is about 75% less per current targets. Land-use intensity (square feet per pound of marketable flower per year) is about 25% less than indoor intensities per current targets. When bringing solar into the equation, there is no contest: it takes way more land to grow indoors. More... [top]
November 29, 2022 - While modern-day, billion-dollar cannabis companies may claim high marks on avoiding Environment, Social, and Governance risks to themselves and their shareholders and even championing these issues in the world at large, there are snakes in the garden. Certainly, the complexion of cannabis companies conjures up some positive ESG attributes. Among these are advocating for promoting ‘natural’ medicines, decriminalization and decarceration of non-violent offenders, and ostensibly representing socially progressive and ecological values more broadly. And, there are a host of more generic and potentially positive things any industry can do along the lines of diversity and inclusion, transparency, honorable corporate ethics, and climate change risk assessment and preparedness. Some cannabis companies talk about these issues as well, but, in many cases, a hard-ribbed look at execution tells a different story, particularly when it comes to environmental impacts. More ... [top]
September 1, 2022 - Cannabis has long been a radioactive policy issue, from the trials and tribulations of legalization to the market gyrations caused by oversupply. It’s time to add energy to the list — particularly in light of looming power outages, the recent passage by Congress of sweeping climate-protection provisions under the Inflation Reduction Act and California’s decision to postpone the closure of Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant to keep carbon emissions in check. Few realize that the humble joint — once an emblem of the counterculture that famously campaigned against Diablo Canyon in the 1970s — is now, quite literally, becoming nuclear-powered. In PG&E’s service territory, a whopping 39% of the electricity embodied in an indoor-grown joint is nuclear. It would behoove policymakers to put that in their pipes and smoke it. More ... [top]
June 27, 2022 - In 2020, cultivators of five acres of cannabis hidden within two large historic warehouses blew a fuse. When the canopy expand beyond what the electric infrastructure could support, the operators blew a 500,000-watt transformer and the lights went dark. Subsequently, up to a dozen non-permitted diesel generators were brought to the site and operated for nearly two years before they were shut down. The tractor-trailor-sized generators put out enough power to run 9,000 homes, consuming abut 12,000 gallons of fuel per day at the peak. Most of the 32 residents on the second floor of one of the buildings were smoked out, quite literally. More ... [top]
April 20, 2022 - Long before there was an Earth Day — and very long before there was a Weed Day, observed on 4/20 by those in the know — cannabis culture was aligned with environmental values. That went out the window when cultivation moved indoors, particularly conspicuously in California. While this pair of April celebrations are separated by only a day, the expanding carbon footprint of indoor factory farming -- which, mind-bogglingly, requires around 400-times as much energy pound-for-pound as needed to smelt aluminum. -- creates a chasm running wide and deep. More ... [top]
February 24, 2022 - Greenwashing has been around since the notion of sustainability first took root. Cannabis is no exception. In the cannabis space, the problem is particularly thorny given the lack of third-party standards, and highly limited transparency in data and analytics behind public-facing statements. Among the many reasons to be alert to greenwashing, the industry trade press has noted that there are risks and opportunities vis-a-vis investors who are looking for companies that adhere to high ESG (environment, social, governance) principles. The lack of well-defined best practices is an intrinsic problem (to what does a company aspire without these guideposts?). Even regulators greenwash! Read more for a running list of greenwashing examples that have raised an eyebrow. More ... [top]