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Cannabis Growing Putting a Strain on the Energy Grid?

The nature of the indoor growing of Cannabis has affected the energy grid more than expected. The legal and illegal growing industries are using more energy than Starbucks by 2.7 billion kilowatts per hour. States and cities are scrambling to make tax rules that will account for the use of energy in their areas. They are doing this by targeting homes that are using a lot of power. For example, Arcata, California has instituted a tax where homes spending more than $700 of energy face a 45 percent tax on electricity.

Key Takeaways:

  • The cannabis industry is using 4.1 billion kilowatts per hour. Starbucks, in comparison, is using 1.7 billion kWh.
  • A single joint of cannabis is equal to a 100 watt light bulb that has run for 17 hours straight.
  • States are now trying to target the industry via taxes to try to make up the energy usage in a variety of ways including a 45 percent tax on residential homes using more than 700 dollars of electricity.

Quote: “A report by New Frontier Data found that legal and illegal cannabis cultivation combined uses almost three times the amount of electricity as the entire Starbucks Corp, with cannabis consuming 4.1 billion kilowatts per hour (KWh) compared with Starbucks using only 1.7 billion KWh, which is still a huge amount of energy. The legal cannabis industry uses around 1.1 million megawatts per hour per year, which is sufficient enough to power 92,500 homes.” (Holley, 2020)

Link to article:

www.theleafdesk.com/the-truth-behind-the-cannabis-industrys-energy-problem/

Photo from:

www.theleafdesk.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/energy-consumption-2-1000×667.jpg

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