Listen to Gina Warren, Professor of Law, A.L. O'Quinn Chair in Environmental Studies, Co-director of the Environment, Energy, and Natural Resources Center (EENR), University of Houston Law Center, and Distinguished Energy Law Summer Scholar at VLGS discuss the environmental justice and energy concerns of indoor cannabis cultivation with host Laura Ireland and co-host Laurie Beyranevand.
Announcer This podcast is a production of the Maverick Lloyd School for the Environment at Vermont Law and Graduate School. |
Laura Ireland Hello, listeners, and thank you for tuning in to another episode of Hothouse Earth Podcast. I'm your host, Laura Ireland, associate director of the Animal Law and Policy Institute here at Vermont Law and Graduate School. Today, we're going to be talking about electricity demand, environmental impacts, and equity issues related to the indoor cultivation of cannabis. Professor Laurie Branagan, the director of the Center for Agriculture and Food Systems at the Environmental Law Center, also here at VLGS, is joining us as a co-host lending her expertise from the food and agriculture law space. So thank you for joining the podcast, Laurie. |
Laurie Beyranevand
Thank you. Thanks for having me.
Laura Ireland
So with us as our wonderful guest, Professor Gina Warren, who is the co-director of the Environment, Energy, and Natural Resources Center at the University of Houston Law Center and the A.L. O'Quinn chair in Environmental Studies. She joined us as a distinguished energy law summer scholar here at Vermont last summer. And while here she gave a hot topic presentation on the “Unwanted Neighbor, How Indoor Cannabis Cultivators Raise Environmental Justice Concerns,” which we encourage you all to watch. And we're happy to have Gina here with us to chat about this summer. So welcome to the Hothouse Earth Podcast.
Gina Warren
Thank you. Thanks for having me back
Laura Ireland So one thing that is so great about VLGS is how we have any great programs like the Institute of Energy and the Environment and the Center for Agriculture and Food Systems, and there are so many great opportunities to learn from each other and collaborate to tackle major environmental issues like through the Farm and Energy Initiative. So be great. If you wanted to talk with us a little bit about your experience here in Vermont last summer and working with the various programs. |
Gina Warren So that was my first experience actually doing a visiting position there for the two weeks that I was there and I had such a fulfilling time, I was able to meet with students and faculty and really enjoyed getting to know everyone and actually getting a ton of feedback on the research that I was doing. |
Laura Ireland Yeah, I think that's one of the great parts about our summer programs and having, you know, just trying to create a lot of opportunities. Yeah, and it's such a great chance to just kind of step away from your normal life and be able to really concentrate on some of these projects that sometimes it's hard to find time, time to do. |
So it's great you were able to work with the Energy and Environment Law Institute, and so now what was your experience working with them?
Gina Warren
So it was a great opportunity. I was able to meet with the students who were doing the clinic during that time, and I heard about projects they were working on, and then they gave me an opportunity to talk to them about the research that I was doing, and I got a large amount of feedback from them and I actually incorporated some of it into my work for this piece of good. |
Laura Ireland
One of the big things about cannabis that maybe a lot of us don't consider the energy costs and the environmental concerns that are coming along with this growing cannabis industry. Many of us and with many products we know, we don't actually see the real true cost of what it takes to get these products to market. So what prompted you to really dive into this issue and explore some of these issues? |
Gina Warren
So I started researching this topic in 2015 or maybe 2014, and when I was practicing law before I started teaching in 2010, I was practicing law in Washington State. And so some of the ideas that I had gotten, especially early on in my academic career, came from the practice of, you know, the issues that the industry was seeing at the time. |
And one of my clients was an energy company, a utility company in the Pacific Northwest. And one of the concerns that they were seeing is that as cannabis was being legalized, that it was creating a pretty big demand on the energy system. And so I started researching and and it was quite significant. And it's still it's not quite clear exactly how much energy it takes because it's not always reported.
But we know that it's significant. We know that it's somewhere around 70 times that of a regular business building, or office building. And so when I started looking at it, I started realizing that it was something that the regulators hadn't considered yet. And and so at the time, I think it was legalized in four states, and Washington state was one of those.
And the and no one had in their licensing scheme put anything in there with regard to energy or environmental issues. So there were no energy or environmental controls. And then originally I was like, okay, well, that's not a big deal. We should just use renewable energy and just make sure that all the new facilities that are being developed have renewable energy.
And then I was told that's not possible, that there's literally not enough roof space or renewable energy to be able to accommodate the energy demand of the indoor cannabis industry.
Laura Ireland
So is it pretty much in every state? Is it required to have cannabis grown indoors? And is it like a safety issue? Is it just to like to make sure that the crop is consistent or like, what is it that is kind of driving everything to be indoors? |
Gina Warren
And there are a couple of factors. Some of the states who have legalized it require it to be indoors, and some of the municipalities are localities within those states do as well. And the requirements to be indoors are related to generally security and crime concerns and just wanting to control the industry. So you have states requiring it, localities that are requiring it to be indoors. |
You also have an industry that seems to at some level prefer to be indoors as well. And that's because of being able to control the environment, being able to grow 24 seven all year long, regardless of what the weather is outside. And then also that there is an ability to make sure that the that the product is very pure as to whatever it is, the type that they're wanting to grow.
And so basically between between regulators wanting the indoors and cultivators wanting indoors, we see that about 60% of our cultivation in the United States is from indoor cultivation.
Laurie Beyranevand
Gina, I was wondering if there's any aspect of that too, though. Like I know you just said, some of it has to do with security and safety concerns, but I wondered if is there any aspect of it that's related to like transportation so that like the cultivators would rather be closer? Like, grow closer to the market so they're not exposing themselves to the risk of having to transport long distances? |
Gina Warren
That's actually a great question. I hadn't considered that, but you're right. And so it's still federally illegal. Yeah. And given that it's federally illegal, you can't transport it across state lines. And and so you there are also some localities that are banned it. And so you could run into some issues there but but it could be one reason why that that it would give easier control over the product and the the distribution. |
Laura Ireland Yeah. Safety and transport. So interesting. Just so many different local, state, federal policies or laws that just make it kind of a complicated. Yeah. And again, a lot of these things that maybe that we don't consider I mean in addition to I don't know if there's water pollution, air pollution, labor issues, you know, that's a lot that we see kind of the industrial animal agriculture world with the worlds that Lori and I are in with the food and ag and animal law. And and, you know, we kind of see that this proportionate impact on local communities is are that an issue in the indoor cannabis industry as well? |
Gina Warren
Yes, it's it's looking like it's going to be potentially an issue. So we already have tobacco and liquor facilities located in this disproportionately located in minority neighborhoods. And it looks like that marijuana cultivators might be following suit on that. There were some lawsuits that were filed, and it really made me think about it. So I hadn't thought about this being an issue for environmental justice before I started doing some research on this topic. |
And so because I had historically written about it from a energy and environmental perspective, I went to think about, well, maybe I want to write more on marijuana, because when I wrote so I wrote one article there were about five states that had legalized. Then I wrote another one, there were about 15, and now there's more than 25, I think, or something like that.
And and so I was just kind of researching to see what current issues there might be with marijuana, indoor cultivation. And during that research, I found some lawsuits that were filed against Oakland, Oakland City in California. And and they were filed claiming that there were environmental justice concerns with locating these facilities in those areas. And they were at the in in general these cases were concerned about semis and big tractor trailer full of generators that were running 24 seven to be able to supply the electricity needed for some of these facilities.
And then these facilities were located in underserved neighborhoods. And so they brought lawsuits and they were claiming environmental damage and environmental concerns, but they were also illustrating the concern of environmental justice as well.
Laura Ireland Well, the kind of time that back to the energy use does it and I don't know a lot of how, you know, the energy law and how all the policies work together to buy that. I mean, if you have a facility that is using that much energy and that, you know, in a specific location, can that have energy implications for, you know, higher costs in certain communities as well? |
Gina Warren
Yes, it can be. And in fact, you'll see in some of these areas, there's increased brownouts and also facilities that are being retired earlier. So increased costs for infrastructure as the more electricity is being used at a at a faster rate. Basically, the infrastructure needs to be changed out more often. And so that increases cost to everyone who's receiving electricity on that grid right now. |
But I thought what was also interesting is that in those cases, the cities and the localities were allowing them to site these facilities without requiring them to guarantee that they had access to enough electricity. And that's what really led to the problem. And these situations. And that kind of goes back to what the whole issue was when I first started looking at this is there's just simply not enough electricity to to facilitate the needs of these indoor cultivators and certainly not enough renewable energy to do so.
Laura Ireland Yeah. So as you're exploring these things, are there are there any ideas for solutions or different ways that the industry can kind of move forward that mitigate some of these problems? |
Gina Warren So I have recommended certain things through my last paper, through the years of encourage 18 states and localities to require a certain amount of renewable energy be used for the generation for these facilities, and that to do it on a sliding scale. And if there isn't enough to go around, then they would pay a fee into a fund that then can be used to help offset some of the energy use that they're having. |
The paper that I currently am looking at is more focused on addressing the environmental concerns instead of the energy concerns, and also some of the additional concerns that came to light when I was researching this paper of the equity issues for the cannabis industry.
Laurie Beyranevand
Yeah, in my mind, cannabis isn't that different from any other crop that we're growing and in. In a lot of ways it's being used, you know, not necessarily for smoking as much anymore as it's been being used to put into edibles, which then become sort of a category of dietary supplements in a funny way. |
And the food supply. And I think you like the when when Gina, you mention the issue of their not being enough rooftops for like energy generation. I was thinking I wonder how much of that is because we're competing. The growth of this crap is competing with other forms of urban agriculture, which like in some ways we need. And I wonder as as regulators and policymakers are thinking about all these issues and how much they're trying to balance or think about, like we want to be able to support urban agriculture or for poor resilience needs and a whole bunch of other reasons why we think it's important to support urban AG.
And I don't know how much of that is being taken into account as people are trying to think about cannabis production indoors, which is like another form of urban agriculture. To a certain extent, it's just growing a totally different kind of crap and like how do you how do you sort of prioritize those things? Because I bet one has tremendous potential for economic development or the other.
Maybe that has some potential, but not nearly as much profitability as that growth of cannabis. But at the same time, there's really important reasons to prioritize growing food in urban environments and to do that in a way that using renewable because also any type of crop you're growing indoors creates all those same burdens on the energy sector. And I think if you're growing food, it feels a little more like maybe it's okay to justify those burdens on consumers.
Whereas if you're growing cannabis, there might be less, you know, people might feel okay about those burdens that are being placed on consumers or the brownouts or the blackouts or any of that, because it's not necessarily in service to something that we feel like is like a need or necessity in the same way that food is. I see it as a crop just like other crops.
They just have the potential to make people a lot of money, which is why I think it's really important to be thinking about the equity considerations, considering the populations that have been harmed over time by the way that we've regulated and penalized cannabis consumption and cultivation and all those things.
Gina Warren Yeah, there are, though a general consensus is that you can't fix that. The concern of having it indoors, that it has to go outdoors, that it needs to be and needs to be cultivated outdoors. And the benefits of it being outdoors. And so I think that I, I speak about this what I hope to be in a temporary manner of that ultimately things will end up being to go outside. |
Laura Ireland Are there other equity concerns have been raised that you want to want to share talk about? |
Gina Warren When I started researching this, I realized that equity was going right along with the environment in some of these cases. And so the the communities who are being burdened by the environmental impacts, they are also paying more proportionately than other consumers of electricity. And according to the Department of Energy, the poorest families in our country are paying upwards of 30% of their income for energy costs, as compared with about 3.8% for the average family. |
Laura Ireland
Oh, wow. Yeah, it's a huge difference.
Gina Warren And they're not getting access to the benefit of this industry. So there's barriers that are in place that are preventing them from being able to be part of this industry. And one of those barriers is capital. And it's a significant issue that I didn't necessarily realize or even think about before I started researching this. But apparently there's only about 15% of nonwhite owners of cannabis in the cannabis industry. |
And so if we're if we're seeing that the burden of this is is being placed on the communities and they're not getting the benefits of being able to to to be financially part of the system, then that's a serious equity issue. And so that's what I started researching a little bit more. And it actually shift a little. It shifted a little bit away from the environmental to the social impacts that I was pretty surprised to find was was a significant issue.
And so there are a lot of reasons why. And there are there are people that have been doing studies on this, and there are reasons why that there are all these barriers and what these barriers are to entry into the industry. But one thing that was became relatively obvious to me as I was looking at this is that the host communities are not getting any benefit and they're getting all of the negatives.
And I found that Massachusetts has a requirement that that municipalities enter into host agreements with the cultivators, which is great. I mean, it's a great start. And one of the things that they look at is trying to bring in some jobs into the municipality, not necessarily into the host community, though. And so I started seeing that this was this was a good idea, but there were a few issues with it.
And one of them that the jobs are more general and not local. Another that the community itself is not a member to the host agreement. And then another one being that there might be some conflicts of interest because the the municipalities are receiving taxes and incentives for bringing in cannabis grows into their communities, and that's not filtering back to these host communities.
And so I started looking at ways that we might be able to fix some of that and seeing if there were any others, any kind of host community agreements out there that I could look at. And I did find one. And that one that I found talked a lot about bringing jobs to the local communities is I talked about, you know, ensuring more green space and helping with maybe some education programs and and ensuring that the host community themselves were involved in the process and received the benefit from having these facilities located in their communities.
Laurie Beyranevand I think one of the challenges with this industry, too, and I know that Vermont has tried to deal with this a little bit in the laws as they've been thinking about cannabis production and how to regulate it is consolidation in the industry because from an equity perspective, like most of the executives in the industry, wind up being white and they're the ones that are reaping most of the benefits from production. |
And if you don't, if a state doesn't take measures to reduce consolidation in the industry, then you're going to have all the profits basically flowing up into this corporation, which, as Gina was just talking about, doesn't benefit the community. And really does benefit the people that have the capital and the money to be able to run these companies and and to be able to acquire more and more and create more and more and then have consolidation in the industry.
So I think that that in some of the states that legalized early, that was not something that people had necessarily considered or thought about, like what it would look like for people to basically have franchises. But that like other states that have been a little slower to do it, have been watching what's happened in those states and tried to take measures to prevent some of that so that you'd have mostly smaller operations, which means that the likelihood of those the jobs being in the community and the profits being in the community, at least there's the potential for that to be higher.
Gina Warren Yeah, I agree. And so there are some unique things that are you'll see you're seeing through some of the state licensing programs for trying to combat some of that. I also think it's important to note is that the more regulations we put on indoor cannabis grows, the harder it is to get access. And and so I acknowledge that in my paper and I talk about, you know, I understand that wanting to demanding that it be more environmentally friendly and that we have environmental justice reviews just by doing that, that also increases the the burden of being able to get access to the industry. |
And so that's really unfortunate. But maybe through some of the other factors that what you were talking about and the community benefits agreements potentially and some of the other ways that we're going about it, we can equalize that some. Yeah.
Laura Ireland So this has been such a great conversation and I really want to thank you both. Lori, thanks for being a great co-host and I hope you'll join me again sometime. |
Laurie Beyranevand
I'd love to
Laura Ireland And Gina, this is so great again. And thank you so much for being with us on the House Earth podcast. And I can't wait for you to come visit Vermont Law in graduate school again. |
Gina Warren
Thank you so much. It was a really a great pleasure of mine. Thank you.
Laura Ireland
Well, thank you, everyone, for tuning in and hope that you'll join us again on
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