In this September photo, Richmond natives Adam Blankinship (left), a clinical pharmacist, and his brother, Trey Blankinship, pharmacist in charge at Green Leaf Medical of Virginia’s South Richmond facility, check plants inside a flowering room at the new medical marijuana dispensary.
The same Democratic-controlled General Assembly that passed the law requiring that Virginia’s electric grid go carbon-free by 2050 also passed a law that could ramp up carbon emissions in 2024.
Why this contradiction? The answer is legal marijuana.
The Cannabis Business Times — legal marijuana has grown not only weed but also lots of business publications — reports that only 42% of the nation’s pot crop is grown outdoors. If it’s not grown outdoors, then it must be grown indoors. Remember back in 1996 when federal authorities busted three people in Roanoke for growing marijuana in what they said was the largest indoor growing operation they’d ever seen in this part? Turns out the people involved in that so-called “Phototron” pot-growing operation — nicknamed for a piece of hydroponic machinery — were simply ahead of their time. Today most commercial marijuana is grown indoors.
There are some sound economic reasons for this. Greenhouses can grow crops year-round and those crops can be more consistent — they’re not subject to the vagaries of the weather. Many of the states that have legalized marijuana have encouraged indoor operations, either directly or indirectly. Illinois, the sixth biggest farm state in the country based on agricultural output, bans outdoor growing altogether. In Colorado and Washington, the first two states to legalize recreational marijuana, localities are allowed to ban cultivation — and many have. Ditto California, which is now the nation’s biggest marijuana market.
The result is that nobody talks about “marijuana farming,” they talk about “marijuana cultivation” and that cultivation is very much an urban enterprise — and an indoor one. In California, the biggest marijuana-producing locality isn’t in the San Joaquin Valley, it’s in the city of Santa Barbara. That’s produced an unintentional but very predictable side-effect: Electricity usage goes up. And that’s started to prompt concerns that the only thing green about the marijuana market is the leaf itself. Put more plainly, cannabis cultivation has led to an increase in carbon emissions because of all the electricity it takes. In Colorado, there are now more than 600 licensed marijuana growers in Denver. They also use so much power that at one point they accounted for 3.9% of the city’s electricity usage.
In political terms, this is what’s called “cross-pressure.” Liberals are generally the ones pushing for legalizing marijuana, but they’re also at the forefront of warning about carbon emissions. What happens when those two things are at odds? Hold that thought.
Evan Mills is a California-based energy and climate analyst. He worked on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which won the Nobel Peace Prize back in 2007. He’s devoted some of his time lately to looking at the climate effects of legal marijuana and doesn’t like what he sees. He recently authored an article for Slate — a left-leaning website — that declared quite plainly “to make cannabis green, we need to grow it outdoors.”
His money quote: “A decade ago, I estimated that indoor cannabis cultivation across the U.S. was inhaling $6 billion in energy each year while exhaling carbon emissions of 3 million cars. A recent study I conducted suggests the average smoker in Colorado, the country’s highest per-capita usage state, unwittingly increases their household’s carbon footprint by 60 percent.”
Here’s another: “The energy appetite of cannabis factories is already poised to outstrip all California’s wind energy production.”
So how should Virginians — particularly those inclined to be concerned about the environment — respond? Hold that thought, too.
Virginia’s marijuana bill is surprisingly pro-rural for a piece of legislation passed by a suburban-dominated legislature that’s made a pastime of ignoring rural areas. Unlike some of those legal weed states, it doesn’t allow localities to ban cultivation. They can ban selling marijuana in weed stores — but only if they vote to do so in a referendum next year — but they can’t ban growing marijuana. That creates an opportunity for rural Virginia that many rural counties in Colorado and elsewhere don’t have. There’s a chance that entrepreneurs there — we often call them farmers — could get some of the 450 licenses to grow marijuana. And if there are marijuana growers in rural areas, that means it’s more likely that some of the 60 licenses for marijuana manufacturers (the processors who turn it into a saleable product) will locate there, as well. Of course, they’d have to compete against indoor operations — which might well be in the urban crescent — and would have the disadvantage of not being able to produce as much crop.
Here’s where conservative counties — and their conservative legislators — should do something that might feel unnatural to them. They should make common cause with climate change activists — and, in this case, insist those marijuana-growing operations be only outdoors. That would be good for the environment and it would be good for the rural economy. Some legalization advocates might not like that — they’re based in the urban crescent and might see this as a jobs question for their districts, as well. Who needs the jobs more, though?
The Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission’s report last year on legalization warned that, based on other states, most of the 11,000 to 18,400 jobs that would be created by a legal marijuana market would “likely pay below Virginia’s median wage” of $42,000 a year. The key word there is “Virginia’s.” Because of the vast economic disparities in the state, most of those jobs would likely pay more than the median wage in many rural counties. In Washington state, the median wage for marijuana workers is $30,000 a year. That’s more than the median household income in Dickenson County and close to the median household income in Buchanan County, Emporia and Galax. It’s higher than the per capita income in virtually all of Southside and Southwest Virginia. Those marijuana jobs would make a bigger difference there than in the urban crescent.
So here’s an idea: Gov. Ralph Northam could propose an amendment to only allow outdoor marijuana growing (with proper security, of course, which is already mentioned in the bill) unless it’s done with 100% renewables. That would be in keeping with the intent of the Clean Economy Act a year ago — and in keeping with the “social equity” provisions of the marijuana bill. Can rural legislators who voted against both of those things turn around and make that case here?
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