IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/enepol/v46y2012icp58-67.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The carbon footprint of indoor Cannabis production

Author

Listed:
  • Mills, Evan

Abstract

The emergent industry of indoor Cannabis production – legal in some jurisdictions and illicit in others – utilizes highly energy intensive processes to control environmental conditions during cultivation. This article estimates the energy consumption for this practice in the United States at 1% of national electricity use, or $6 billion each year. One average kilogram of final product is associated with 4600kg of carbon dioxide emissions to the atmosphere, or that of 3 million average U.S. 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. Energy analysts and policymakers have not previously addressed this use of energy. The unchecked growth of electricity demand in this sector confounds energy forecasts and obscures savings from energy efficiency programs and policies. While criminalization has contributed to the substantial energy intensity, legalization would not change the situation materially without ancillary efforts to manage energy use, provide consumer information via labeling, and other measures. Were product prices to fall as a result of legalization, indoor production using current practices could rapidly become non-viable.

Suggested Citation

  • Mills, Evan, 2012. "The carbon footprint of indoor Cannabis production," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 46(C), pages 58-67.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:enepol:v:46:y:2012:i:c:p:58-67
    DOI: 10.1016/j.enpol.2012.03.023
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301421512002285
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.enpol.2012.03.023?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Michael D. Roth, 2005. "Marijuana and your heart," Nature, Nature, vol. 434(7034), pages 708-709, April.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Christopher L. Newman & Marlys J. Mason & Jeff Langenderfer, 2021. "The shifting landscape of cannabis legalization: Potential benefits and regulatory perspectives," Journal of Consumer Affairs, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 55(3), pages 1169-1177, September.
    2. Elizabeth A. Bennett, 2018. "Extending ethical consumerism theory to semi-legal sectors: insights from recreational cannabis," Agriculture and Human Values, Springer;The Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society (AFHVS), vol. 35(2), pages 295-317, June.
    3. Dimitra I. Pomoni & Maria K. Koukou & Michail Gr. Vrachopoulos & Labros Vasiliadis, 2023. "A Review of Hydroponics and Conventional Agriculture Based on Energy and Water Consumption, Environmental Impact, and Land Use," Energies, MDPI, vol. 16(4), pages 1-26, February.
    4. Adam J. Davis & Karl R. Geisler & Mark W. Nichols, 2016. "The price elasticity of marijuana demand: evidence from crowd-sourced transaction data," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 50(4), pages 1171-1192, June.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.

      More about this item

      Keywords

      Energy; Buildings; Horticulture;
      All these keywords.

      Statistics

      Access and download statistics

      Corrections

      All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:enepol:v:46:y:2012:i:c:p:58-67. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

      If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

      If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

      If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

      For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/enpol .

      Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

      IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.