IN 2012, when Colorado and Washington became the first two states to legalize marijuana for recreational use, cannabis users everywhere rejoiced. Legalization continues to spread across the United States, with Virginia becoming the latest state to embrace pot.
Fans of legalization list the prospect of taxing legal weed and generating new jobs, as reasons to go big on marijuana. In 2019, the legal cannabis industry generated $13.6 billion in annual sales in the U.S. That number could reach a staggering $130 billion by 2024.
But another aspect of legalization is overlooked: the negative effect cannabis production has on the environment.
In a new study, a Colorado State University research team examined the relationship between greenhouse gas emissions and cannabis cultivation. They found shockingly high amounts of emissions baked into marijuana processing — a dangerous side-effect of the Jolly Green
WHAT’S NEW — This finding was published Monday in the journal Nature.
An investigation of indoor cannabis cultivation across the U.S. revealed each kilogram of dried cannabis flower results in 2,283 to 5,184 kilograms of carbon dioxide emissions, depending on the geographic location.
By comparison, a year of driving a car that burns 2,000 liters of gasoline releases about 4,600 kilograms of carbon dioxide emissions.
As more states legalize and establish requirements for the cultivation of weed, indoor cannabis cultivation — as opposed to a greenhouse or outdoor cultivation — has become the preferred choice because it allows for temperature control and other factors that support growth.
These factors are what drives emissions, the study suggests.
Lead author Hailey Summers, a graduate student at Colorado State University, tells Inverse that, as cannabis production has evolved, the industry has developed some common practices that stem from early legal restrictions.
“Our study investigated these common practices of growing cannabis indoors not only in Colorado but around the U.S. to understand the greenhouse gas emissions,” Summer says.
Cannabis grows under LED lights. The researchers recommend switching to LED lights for lower-emissions operations. Getty
HOW THEY DID IT — Summers and her colleagues developed a cannabis cultivation model, tracking the emissions that result from all the different elements necessary to grow marijuana indoors in a warehouse environment.
For example, marijuana requires specific temperature and humidity conditions to grow properly. Even indoor facilities require proper cooling and lighting equipment to protect the crops from volatile outdoor weather.
The team calculated the energy needed to grow marijuana in such conditions, using a year’s worth of hourly weather data from more than 1,000 places. The locations span all 50 states, regardless of whether or not they have legalized cannabis for recreational use. The hope, Summers explains, was to evaluate current indoor growth systems and “to predict values for those states who have yet to legalize.”
The model was designed to convert the energy for these facilities — supplied largely by electricity and natural gas — into the resulting greenhouse gas emissions.
Unlike previous research on greenhouse gas emissions, this study also considers ‘cradle-to-flower’ greenhouse gas…
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