"Colo. Struggles With Marijuana's Huge Carbon Footprint"

"DENVER -- Colorado, which gets 60 percent of its electricity from coal-burning power plants, has set some of the more ambitious greenhouse gas reduction targets in the United States. It wants to cut emissions from its power plants 38 percent by 2030. Denver, its largest city, has a plan to cut 80 percent of all of its emissions by midcentury.

One of the immediate problems of the target-setters, however, is that the state lacks plans from its fastest-growing, most energy-hungry users: owners of indoor marijuana farms.

This city has over 300 of them, from the licensed, cavernous warehouses downtown where workers wear sunglasses and sunblock to prevent damage from banks of 1,000-watt lightbulbs to an unknown number of clandestine "grow houses" in the suburbs, often rented homes whose tenants sometimes hide their massive electricity use by stealing it before it hits their meters.

What's worrisome about this to Colorado and other states planning to follow its pioneering example by legalizing both medical and recreational marijuana is that the power needs of the industry are helping to push electricity use up, not down."

John J. Fialka reports for ClimateWire April 27, 2016.

SEE ALSO:

"Emissions: Coloradans Feel The Heat From Indoor Marijuana Growing" (ClimateWire)