What's Stopping Weed Growers From Going Greener?

Climate Cast
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Automatic TRANSCRIPT

So i've read. It takes the equivalent greenhouse gas emissions of tank of gas in your car. To produce an ounce of cannabis that seems surprisingly high. Is that accurate. Yes that is accurate in to be clear. It's a high energy efficient car not one of your trucks. That's gonna run a lot of gas. It's a pretty. We're looking at somewhere around forty miles a gallon. So i'm guessing electricity for the grow lights. is a big factor there. What else causes all those emissions. When you produce cannabis so cannabis is predominantly grown indoors. And you mentioned the grow lights create huge amount of energy consumption but what happens in addition to the lights is that these lights are really hot and so then you have to bring in a c. You have to bring in a lot of other systems that also take electricity to keep the climate perfect for growing cannabis. So this number jumped out at me. When i started reading about this cannabis. The industry's footprint. Already accounts for more than one percent of us electricity consumption and ten percent in massachusetts. How is the industry addressing those emissions. The problem right now is that no one's really thinking about this terms of how do we reduce the energy consumption. Some states are passing some laws massachusetts. For example is requiring growers to use led lights which does reduce the energy consumption. But a lot of states. Don't have these rules and the federal government overall just isn't talking about this.

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