Whatever your stance on marijuana, one thing is clear: growing the plant indoors is a tremendous drain on energy. According to a study from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, it consumes one percent of America’s energy, or enough to power two million average homes.
“The added electricity use [to an average home] is equivalent to running about 30 refrigerators,” researcher Evan Mills told the New York Times. “Processed cannabis results in 3,000 times its weight in CO2 emissions. For off-grid production, it requires 70 gallons of diesel fuel to produce one indoor cannabis plant, or 140 gallons with smaller, less-efficient gasoline generators.”
He went on to explain that energy-saving techniques could potentially decrease the energy consumption of marijuana cultivation by up to 75 percent. But it’s not just energy that’s wasted. Each individual plant requires from three to five gallons of water per day, making water consumption a serious problem as well.
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