Have You Ever Looked at the Grid on…Weed?

Possession of recreational marijuana has now been legal in Oregon for almost a year, and as of April 1st, growing it will have been legal for six months. It goes without saying, however, that both recreational possession and production of cannabis existed long before 2015. In fact, back in 2011, Lawrence Berkeley National Lab Senior Scientist Evan Mills published a landmark paper on the carbon impacts from U.S. indoor pot production (still considered the seminal analysis on the topic).

Mills estimated that the largely illicit (at that time) indoor marijuana cultivation industry accounted for roughly 1% of national energy usage. This is equivalent to a whopping $6 billion* utility bill or the carbon emissions from 3 million cars over a year. To put it yet another way, that’s enough electricity to power 2 million homes or 15 million metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions.

Only five years later, more than 20 U.S. states have legalized marijuana – at least in some fashion. The fact is that both the literal and figurative climate in Oregon makes for an attractive recreational marketplace. And while that’s certainly a positive for pot enthusiasts as well as the growers and retailers, it’s important that our region carefully explore the effects of bringing an industry that, in terms of raw energy demands, dwarfs pharmaceuticals, onto an already taxed electric grid.

This exploration is not yet complete. In Oregon, there’s just not enough data. But we do have some early indicators.

Legal marijuana production and sales have been active in Washington since 2014, and in Oregon since July 1 of last year. The market in Colorado, however, came online in 2012, and the data are staggering: Xcel Energy, Colorado’s largest private utility, sells enough energy to marijuana growers to power an estimated 35,000 homes (roughly 300 gigawatt hours of electricity). And experts anticipate that this demand will only rise.

According to recent analysis from the Northwest Power and Conservation Council, between Oregon, Washington, Idaho and Montana, electricity demands from cannabis production might triple over the next two decades. The resulting load burden would be equivalent to powering an additional 220,000 homes.

Unfortunately, load issues have already cropped up. When last reported in November, Pacific Power had experienced seven transformer blowouts from indoor growing operations. And this is in just the first four months of legalization. PGE experienced similar issues: 10 percent of all blowouts in PGE’s service territory come as a direct result of indoor grow operations, or about 40 total incidents per year.

But why is the pot industry so energy intensive? Why don’t we hear about transformer blowouts from large-scale hothouse tomato production? The answer is not straightforward.

First of all, we’re talking about an industry that’s lived in the shadows for decades, either “stealing” electricity off the grid, or worse: powering operations with diesel generators. This created a need among growers to focus on crop yield as opposed to marginal energy savings.

Whereas traditional indoor-ag industries have worked for years in close collaboration with utilities, product manufacturers, and groups like the Energy Trust of Oregon to achieve energy savings, cannabis growers have not had that luxury and must now make up for lost time.

From seed to flower, indoor pot production requires far more electricity than tomatoes; by some estimates, accounting for as much as 50% of total overhead production costs. To reap multiple harvests, the indoor atmosphere tries to mimic ideal (but wholly unnatural) outdoor growing conditions (75 and sunny, 24 hours per day, seven days per week).

Unfortunately, this model requires high-intensity lamps that give off lots of heat, and cooling systems to manage that heat. Dehumidifiers control moisture in the air and specialized equipment injects additional carbon dioxide. All this uses enormous amounts of electricity. By some estimates (although routinely disputed by growers), traditional operations use the equivalent energy of 29 refrigerators for every four plants.

To complicate matters further, the federal government still outlaws recreational marijuana. And in a part of the country where much of our electricity comes purchased from federal dam networks, it’s next to impossible for growers and utilities to play nice.

But this may change soon. With recreational or medical marijuana now legalized throughout most of the West, and the trend heading in that direction for many other states, the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners took notice. In fact, an entire session at their annual conference last November was devoted to the topic: “The Straight Dope on Energy & the Marijuana Industry”.

It’s clear that regulators and power providers alike know full well that legal weed is here to stay. The question now for these groups and others like CUB is: how best to make up for lost time and accommodate a new and rapidly growing energy hungry industry.

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