By Tom Walsh
Maine voters will decide this fall whether marijuana will become the
state’s newest recreational intoxicant of choice, which could put a huge
dent in retail sales of Allen’s Coffee Brandy.
Voter approval of
Maine’s wacky weed ballot referendum also could jumpstart the emergence
of a new industry in Maine: marijuana cultivation, creating new jobs
that offer workers a new take on “high” wages. Or not.
The same prohibitive costs of doing business that have driven
industries out of Maine and have made the state an unattractive place to
establish a new business or to expand an existing business would also
impact marijuana production, particularly Maine’s high cost of
electricity.
Marijuana may be a weed, but cultivation of strains of pot
that pack a hefty dose of THC, the plant’s psychotropic component, is an
indoor undertaking. It’s a botanical labor of love, a process requiring
a lot of electricity to power high-intensity grow lights and critical
climate control technologies.
Marijuana cultivation is not
environmentally friendly, given the huge reliance on fossil fuels to
generate electricity, both nationally and in Maine, where generation
relies heavily upon natural gas.
A recent analysis by Gina Warren,
who teaches energy law and policy at the University of Houston Law
Center, claims that indoor marijuana cultivation is one of the most
energy-intensive industries in the United States, with annual energy
costs amounting to nearly $6 billion.
Another study estimates that
growing marijuana indoors requires 5,000 kilowatt hours of electricity
for every kilogram — 2.2 pounds — of marijuana produced. By comparison,
Warren notes, the production of aluminum requires about 16 kilowatt
hours per kilogram.
Recreational use of marijuana is now legal in
Alaska, Colorado, Oregon and Washington and in the District of Columbia,
although many more states — Maine among them — have authorized the use
of medical marijuana. Legalizing recreational pot will be a ballot issue
this fall in Maine, California and Nevada.
Much of Warren’s
analysis focuses on Colorado, where recreational pot has been legal
since 2014. Last year the state’s marijuana industry generated nearly $1
billion in sales, up 42 percent from the year before. Her study also
shows that a 5,000-square-foot indoor marijuana facility consumes six
times more electricity than an average commercial business and 49 times
more electricity than the average Colorado residence.
Demand for
electricity is increasing in Denver by 1.2 percent a year, with
marijuana production accounting for nearly half of that increase.
Warren
points out that the energy issues created in Colorado are indicative of
marijuana cultivation’s hardly benign impact on efforts to reduce
greenhouse gas emissions that exacerbate global warming.
Coal provides
more than 60 percent of the fuel being burned by Colorado’s electrical
generating stations, with natural gas providing another 22 percent. It’s
estimated that indoor marijuana cultivation nationally accounts for
nearly 15 million metric tons of carbon emissions annually, more than
the annual energy-related CO2 emissions of Delaware, Rhode Island, South
Dakota, Vermont and the District of Columbia.
Should marijuana
cultivation emerge as a new industry in Maine, the energy costs involved
will be substantial. In Colorado, industrial users now pay 6.8 cents
per kilowatt hour, significantly less than the 8.3 cents now being
charged to Maine’s industrial customers.
Rates for commercial customers
now run 9.6 cents in Colorado and 12.3 cents in Maine. How pot farmers
in Maine would find themselves classified as ratepayers is among the
unknowns inherent in legalization.
“The best time to address
impacts … is before they occur, not after a major industry is already
established,” Warren says. “Marijuana production is rapidly developing
into an extremely lucrative industry that can afford to manage its
impacts on the environment.”
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