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Indoor cannabis farms in US use more energy than all other agriculture

Two-thirds of US cannabis is grown indoors, requiring lights and temperature control that produce a vast amounts of emissions

By James Dinneen

5 February 2025

New Ů��С��Ƶ. Science news and long reads from expert journalists, covering developments in science, technology, health and the environment on the website and the magazine. — An indoor cannabis farm in California
Shutterstock/Liudi Hara

Indoor cannabis cultivation in the US uses more energy than all outdoor agriculture in the country combined. This generates a large and growing emissions footprint that often goes unrecognised.

“Consumers are led to believe that this is ‘nature’s medicine’ and that it’s ‘green’ in every sense of the word,” says at Energy Associates, a consultancy in California. “There’s lots of greenwashing.”

Read more

A million years of marijuana: How cannabis became our favourite weed

More than 60 per cent of the 24,000 tonnes of cannabis grown…

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