ARE GIANT POT FARMS GREEN?

Oakland's Massive Indoor Medical Cannabis Grows Will Consume Huge
Amounts Of Electricity. But Will The City Make Sure They Don't Add To
Greenhouse-gas Emissions?

Cannabis is usually considered to be a "green" product, but when
Oakland's four giant indoor medical marijuana growing operations
receive permits early next year, they could become the largest energy
consumers in the city. They also could become the biggest sources of
greenhouse gas emissions in Oakland - unless the city tightly
regulates them.

No one knows for sure precisely how much energy the four indoor
facilities will use, because they've never before been constructed on
such a massive scale in the United States. But the intense lighting
required to grow marijuana indoors in an industrialized setting - up
to two football fields in size or larger - is expected to use so much
electricity that outfitting them with solar panels likely will do
little to offset their total energy consumption.

In an interview, Oakland City Councilwoman Rebecca Kaplan, the
co-author of the large cannabis farm law, said the city plans to
address the energy-consumption issue as it develops administrative
guidelines in the months ahead. She said Oakland likely will mandate
energy-efficient lighting, give preference to bidders who put solar
panels on the roofs of their warehouses, and require that the farms
offer "community benefits" packages to the city.

Kaplan said she did not include such mandates in the new law approved
by the council last week because of a request by the Oakland City
Attorney's Office. The city attorney noted that if the city decided to
later adjust the mandates - to either strengthen or weaken them or add
new ones - it would require a cumbersome process of getting the
council to reapprove the law. As a result, the city plans to proffer a
set of administrative regulations that will govern the pot farms.

The Berkeley City Council, by contrast, decided to include basic
environmental mandates on its new large medical cannabis growing
operations should voters approve them on the November ballot. The
council has asked voters to approve six large medical cannabis growing
operations in West Berkeley. Each would be up to 30,000 square-feet in
size, or about two-thirds the size of a football field.

The farms, however, could become bigger if two or more of the growing
operations combine into a single giant space, said Berkeley Mayor Tom
Bates. In that case, the industrialized grows could rival the ones
coming to Oakland. "They're going to require a huge amount of energy,"
Bates noted. "They're going to be a huge drain on our electrical system."

Because solar panels are expected to have so little impact on energy
use at the indoor farms, the Berkeley council decided to include in
the ballot measure a mandate that the growing operations "provide for
an energy offset" equal to the amount of extra electricity the farms
consume compared to other similarly sized industrial uses. Bates
explained that the farms will be required to pay into a fund that
Berkeley will use to plant trees and finance energy-efficiency
measures in low-income residences throughout the city. That way, the
new pot farms won't increase Berkeley's overall greenhouse-gas emissions.

The Berkeley council also wrote into its ballot measure a provision
requiring the large farms to "use organic methods in cultivation and
processing to the maximum extent possible." It's a nasty little secret
in the medical marijuana world that many growers spray their plants
liberally with pesticides - not unlike much the rest of the US
agricultural industry.

Like Oakland, Berkeley plans to solicit bids for the new cultivation
operations, and Bates said that the city will give preference to
bidders who promise to employ organic growing methods. Kaplan said
Oakland also plans to give preference to organic operations. The city
also plans to require catchment systems for wastewater runoff, she
said.

Jeff Wilcox, founder of AgraMed, a nonprofit that plans to bid to
become one of Oakland's big growers, said his warehouse next to
Interstate 880 will be LEED certified. He also plans to install solar
panels, possibly use an onsite natural-gas generator, and stay away
from pesticides. "The goal," he said, "should be to do as little
damage as possible to the environment."

Berkeley, meanwhile, also plans to encourage bidders to consider
outdoor growing operations that use virtually no energy at all. Bates
believes that the rooftops of large warehouses could be suitable for
big grows. Oakland, by contrast, plans to discourage outdoor grows
because of crime concerns.

Many medical cannabis growers prefer cultivating indoors because they
have much more control over growing operations. Nearly all Oakland
producers grow indoors. They also believe it gives them a more
marketable product, said Dale Gieringer of NORML, who supports outdoor
growing. "Indoor growing uses a ton of energy," he said, "but
everybody in the business tells me you can't sell outdoor pot - that
it doesn't look good enough; you can't get the little bud package that
looks cute."