How damaging is large scale marijuana cultivation to the environment?

There is a general assumption that all marijuana businesses are making heaps of money. Some businesses are making large profits, but it is not standard across the industry. Although profit margins are healthy in some cases, they are not what people might think because of taxes and costs associated with regulatory compliance. Just how eco-friendly is marijuana cultivation?

It all depends on how marijuana is grown. Grown indoors, marijuana is energy hungry, requiring about 2 000 kilowatt-hours per pound of product.

According to Denver officials, citywide electricity use has been rising at the rate of approximately 1.2 percent per annum, 45% of that increase is said to come from marijuana growing facilities. Cannabis grow facilities used as much as 200 million kilowatt hours of electricity in 2014, a huge increase over previous years.

The energy used to grow cannabis comes from existing energy infrastructures, which is powered primarily by fossil fuels like coal. In terms of sustainability, fossil fuel usage does contribute to the cannabis carbon footprint.

According to Energy Policy “One average kilogram of final product is associated with 4600kg of carbon dioxide emissions to the atmosphere, or that of 3 million average US cars when aggregated across all national production. The practice of indoor cultivation is driven by criminalization, pursuit of security, pest and disease management, and the desire for greater process control and yields.”

Although a lot of progress has been made, the cannabis industry is in its infancy but has the potential of being a global leader of sustainability. Developing technologies, such as growing cannabis under LED lights, means less energy will be consumed and less heat emitted than traditional lighting systems and methods.

To be more eco-friendly, marijuana cultivation needs to be sun grown and treated as an agricultural crop, not an industrial product. Cannabis cultivators need to be responsible and look at their carbon footprint and regulations need to include outdoor cultivation.

Sources:

Denverpost.com

http://s3.amazonaws.com/dive_static/diveimages/cannabis-carbon-footprint.pdf