Legal indoor growers of medical marijuana in the U.S. will use $5 billion worth of energy -- or 1 percent of the nation’s electricity supply -- and produce 17 million metric tons of carbon dioxide this year, according to a study by analyst Evan Mills of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
The 400,000 legal growers in California use around 3 percent of that state’s electricity. Electricity use in the major pot-producing area of Humboldt County soared 50 percent per person after medical marijuana was legalized in 1996.
Mills equates the full-year energy usage by growers to that of a million typical California homes or a million typical vehicles.
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