LEDs, the climate disaster, and cannabis carbon problem

LEDs are lighting the way for sustainable cannabis cultivation. They are proven to be more cost-efficient, more environmentally-friendly, and maintenance-free compared to traditional lighting systems that are not only inefficient but are harmful to our planet.

The Guardian recently published a report, "The climate disaster is here¹," ahead of the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26)². The conference brought together government and societal leaders to discuss climate policy.

To put the climate disaster in perspective, The Guardian explains that Earth has "heated up by around 1.2°C, on average, since the pre-industrial era, pushing humanity beyond almost all historical boundaries.¹"

The report¹ explains that cranking up the heat of the entire planet to this degree in just a century is unfathomable—equating to our oceans being hit with the heat equivalent³ of five Hiroshima atomic bombs every second.

The climate disaster is not coming, it is here now. We need leaders across sectors and industries to realize that we must use every tool at our disposal to minimize our carbon footprint.

Cannabis carbon footprint grows

Innovative high-efficiency lighting technology is here, and continuously being improved, but we need everyone using it — especially when it comes to cannabis cultivation. This industry is as dirty as coal when it comes to carbon footprint. In fact, in Colorado, the cannabis industry emits 30% more carbon than the coal mining industry⁴.

Per a Colorado State University study⁵, cannabis cultivation puts out 2.6 metric megatons of carbon dioxide equivalent⁶ (CO2e), whereas coal is responsible for 1.8 metric megatons.

To put this into perspective, the Colorado study — which was published in the journal Nature Sustainability⁷ — estimated that growing 1 ounce of cannabis indoors produces as much carbon as burning through a tank of gas⁸.

The startling reality has prompted calls for environmental regulations⁹ of the cannabis industry similar to that of the energy sector.

Lighting leads the way to energy savings

One simple solution is readily available today: When cannabis cultivators adopted new LED technology, the average energy consumption declined by more than 20% between 2018 and 2020¹⁰. This means that if the industry were to completely transition to LED lighting, its energy consumption would plummet and its impact on our environment would be drastically improved.

Furthermore, adoption of LED technology makes business sense for the cannabis industry. Higher upfront fixture cost is easily justifiable given the reduction in power usage and the improvement in product quality. California Lightworks provides a simple return on investment (ROI) calculator that demonstrates the typical payback period for a cannabis grower that switches from high-pressure sodium (HPS) to LED-based solid-state lighting is less than 12 months.

Other segments of the lighting market are rapidly transitioning to LED. From 2016 to 2018, "Installations of LED products have increased in all applications, roughly doubling to 2,325 million units or 30.0% of all general illumination lighting," per the Department of Energy's (DOE) LED Adoption Report 2020¹¹. The DOE also said that LEDs offer the potential for cutting general lighting energy consumption nearly 50% by 2030¹².

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Source: LEDs Magazine