The insatiable demand for hashish has created an enormous carbon footprint – Watts Up With That?
From Phys Org
from Colorado State University
The life cycle greenhouse gas emissions from indoor cannabis cultivation, modeled in the USA. Credit: Hailey Summers / Colorado State University
It’s no secret that the US $ 13 billion cannabis industry is big business. For many, the environmental impact of this booming business in the form of greenhouse gas emissions from commercial production, mostly indoors, is less obvious.
A new study by researchers at Colorado State University provides the most detailed account of the industry’s carbon footprint yet, a figure that has limited understanding. What is clear, however, is that consumer demand for cannabis is insatiable and showing no signs of an end as more states join legalization.
The study, published in Nature Sustainability, was led by PhD student Hailey Summers, whose advisor Jason Quinn is an Associate Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering. Summers, Quinn, and Evan Sproul, a mechanical engineering scientist, conducted a life cycle assessment of indoor cannabis operations in the United States, analyzing the energy and materials required to grow the product, and counting the corresponding greenhouse gas emissions.
They found that greenhouse gas emissions from cannabis production were largely due to power generation and natural gas consumption through indoor environmental controls, high-intensity grow lights, and the supply of carbon dioxide for accelerated plant growth.
“We knew the emissions would be high, but since they hadn’t been fully quantified before, we identified this as a large area of research,” Summers said. “We just wanted to run with it.”
The CSU group’s efforts update previous work by researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory who quantified small growth activities in California and was ahead of the state legalization cascade since Colorado was first legalized in 2012. To date, 36 states have legalized the medicinal use of cannabis and 15 have legalized its recreational use.
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