An indoor cannabis growing operation. (FatCamera/iStock photo)
Cannabis cultivation in the United States this year will consume 1.8 million megawatt-hours of electricity, about as much as the nation’s 15,000 Starbucks stores.
And next year it’ll be even more, according to a report from analytics firm New Frontier Data estimating just how much power it takes to produce the nation’s cannabis crop.
Yet even as they’ve welcomed it into the regulatory fold, states legalizing cannabis so far have done little to limit or even track the huge amounts of energy needed to grow it indoors. Among the 11 states to permit recreational use of cannabis, only Massachusetts and now Illinois, which did so this week, have included energy-efficiency standards for indoor cultivation, a practice that requires nearly nonstop use of lights and various heating, ventilation and air conditioning systems.
One other state, Oregon, requires simply that growers estimate and then report back on their energy use. Even this small step will help regulators there and in other states to better manage an industry whose electricity demand has long been kept as hidden as its product, says report co-author Derek Smith of Resource Innovation Institute, a nonprofit organization that promotes resource conservation in the cannabis industry.
“This is critically important, and every state should consider that,” Smith told FairWarning. “This industry has very little data historically because growers were concerned about sharing information about how they were using energy because they were hiding from the law.”
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The report’s estimate of massive power demand includes only the legal stuff, both medical and recreational. Add in illicit production–some of it likely to become legal as more states authorize pot growing–and the figure nearly triples.
Meanwhile electricity use also continues unchecked in most cannabis-legal states including California, the world’s largest cannabis market and producer of the majority of the nation’s crop. Its Bureau of Cannabis Control won’t begin asking cultivators for data on energy use until 2022, and hold them to statewide standards for renewable energy starting in 2023.
“It’s a marathon,” says Josh Drayton of the California Cannabis Industry Association, a trade group. “But the more that these issues get brought to the table, the more involvement from energy suppliers and from the industry, the more data and research that can be put out there — that’s really what’s necessary to bring change.”
Beau Whitney, vice president and senior economist at New Frontier Data (Photo courtesy of New Frontier Data).
Using data reported privately by 81 cultivators in nine states, the report’s authors calculated that among the three main methods of cannabis cultivation, indoor accounts for at least 60 percent of all electricity use.
Greenhouse cultivation, which requires less lighting but still involves heating, cooling and ventilation, consumes about 37 percent of the total. Outdoor farming represents the remainder, less than 3 percent.
The authors estimate it takes 18 times more power to grow a gram of cannabis indoors than outdoors. Yet for a variety of reasons including quality control, safety and security concerns, and nuisance issues related to odors and nighttime lighting, outdoor cannabis cultivation isn’t ideal everywhere, says Beau Whitney, a senior economist with New Frontier Data.
Massachusetts is one of those places, due in part to its climate and population density. But state regulators still encourage outdoor growing through discounted license fees for the express purpose of reducing energy demand, notes Sam Milton of Climate Resources Group, a Boston-based consulting firm that has partnered with Resource Innovation Institute.
For indoor growers, Massachusetts’ rules cap power use on lighting at 36 watts per square foot of plant canopy, or 50 watts per square foot for smaller operations.
In Illinois the new law signed this week by Gov. J.B. Pritzker, is even stricter, applying the limit of 36 watts per square foot to all indoor farms, regardless of size.
Both states effectively prohibit the use of any lighting technology that draws more power than efficient light-emitting diodes, or LEDs, Milton says. Though more expensive than standard high-pressure sodium lamps, LEDs last longer and can reduce electricity usage by 40 percent.
The two states also have energy-reporting requirements similar to Oregon’s.
The emerging industry is already confronted with a patchwork of state-level regulations governing pesticides and other potential contaminants including metals, microbes, and solvent residues. In the case of electricity use, Milton says he believes a better alternative will be for the U.S. Department of Energy to aid the industry in developing new standards and efficiency measures.
“These facilities are so energy-intensive, and they’re proliferating, and they’re largely unregulated. I see that sector as something that really needs a lot of attention,” he says. “Without the feds coming in and providing that overarching support, it’ll have to be a state-by-state basis, which is kind of clumsy.”
JB: Good input. New Frontier Data is teaming up with Resource innovation institute to refresh the energy survey and add other issues like water consumption in our analysis. We should talk more off line.
Beau Whitney, Economist.
I am an indoor cultivator (CA) and am totally immersed in efforts to reduce energy usage.
Two points:
1: In certain circumstances, regulations are needed to keep companies from reducing their costs at the expense of the environment (say, dumping waste chemicals into streams). Energy usage in cannabis cultivation is different in that the problem will largely solve itself over a fairly short time frame. In this case, the fastest way to reduce production costs is also favorable for the environment — use less energy.
Those of us who are finding ways to dramatically reduce energy use (and thus production costs) will/are driving the entire market to do the same. Grow operations pounding the cultivation environment with AC and mechanical dehumidification methods simply will get snuffed by market pressures. Through careful environment selection and use I can produce a lb of product using only about a third of the energy that most of my competitors use. As these methods spread, the market will take care of the rest. Ops will save this money or be forced out of business trying to sell product below their costs.
For and example, see the mass exodus from the Denver area to downstate CO (Pueblo, etc) where energy costs and thus production costs are falling. The currently silliness of dumping carbon powered AC into Palm Springs area infernos well over 100 degrees for months on end will soon result in the death of that business model and an accompanying reduction in industry carbon footprint. We are moving from Cathedral City ($300 per lb energy costs) to an area where are energy use is a third of that to get ahead of that curve. Adapt or die.
2: The watt/canopy limit route that Mass and Illinois have taken is totally pointless (though their requirement for LEDs is excellent). If their watt/canopy theory were correct, why not cut the limit in half again and save TWICE as much energy? — because it doesn’t work that way. The absolute analogy would be to limit the wattage of a clothes dryer to half, only to find it means you have to run it twice as long to get the clothes dry. If you limit watt/canopy below max plant efficiency levels, one simply has to have more SF of canopy to get the same production – or grow the plant longer, both of which put you back in the same place. It’s kwh/lb that matters, not watts/canopy.
The problem is usually not that there are too many watts per sf, but that these watts are being produced and used inefficiently.
Kudos to your efforts to highlight the need for change in the industry.