Written Saturday October 28, 2017 By Carmen Márquez
It’s such a well written and important article that we want to share it with you here too….
There are basically three aspects to consider for sustainable cannabis growth: energy consumption, water usage, and waste management.
Starting with energy consumption, reports released by New Frontier Financials in 2016 estimate that cannabis cultivation annually consumes one percent of the United States’ total electrical output, which roughly equates to $6 billion, or 1.7 million homes. Most of this energy is used to supply high-intensity lamps used for indoor growing operations
These type of lamps consume copious amounts of power and generate a lot of heat. This subsequent heat creates the necessity for HVAC systems to keep the plants from overheating, hiking up the already enormous power bill. Some cannabis growers opt for on-site power generation, mostly coal or gas based, in order to reduce their electricity bills but these methods are big sources of CO2 emissions.
To combat high-energy output, a solution that many cannabis cultivators are implementing is LED lighting. Although it may be a larger investment up front, LED lights generally have longer lifetimes, require hardly any maintenance, produce minimal to no heat and are over 60%-70% more energy efficient for the same number of lumens produced.
Another benefit of switching to LED technology is less need for nutrients and fertilizer because of the water evaporation rates in relation to the temperature that the plant, soil and water contain. EverGrown Northwest, located in Olympia, WA, implemented LED and induction lighting to create sustainable growth techniques along with great energy savings that get passed on to retail partners and eventually to their customers.
Water is a necessity for us all, and cannabis is a thirsty plant. Depending on the source, we can estimate that a total of 2-6 gallons of water per plant, per day are needed for cultivation – about twice as much as a wine-grape vineyard.
Cannabis grower groups and the Small Farmers Association are pushing growers toward goals of 0.5 to 1 gallon per plant, per day. Other than the amount of water needed for healthy cultivation, we need to place more consideration on how the amount of pesticides and unbalanced pH in wastewater affects treatment plants.
Closed circuit desalination (CCD) and reverse osmosis (RO) systems are ways to reclaim roughly 75%-97% of the water used in the in the growth allowing reuse and stablishing clean water if/when it goes to waste. Kind Love, a medical marijuana grower in Denver, CO is implementing this the CCD system, which will produce up to 22,000 gallons of purified water per day introducing used water, resulting in 97% recovery of its wastewater.
Seed to sale tracking implementation in legal markets allows cannabis companies to accurately track all aspects of their plants. And while processors, cultivators and dispensaries are disposing of waste correctly per state laws, much of that waste just ends up in landfills.
According to The Stranger, 1.7 million pounds of plant waste was created by Washington State’s legal marijuana industry since 2014. This issue comes from the fact that many composters decided to follow federal law and not accept any cannabis waste, so all local generators are forced to just put it on the garbage.
Some dispensaries are working toward improving this process. L’Eagle, a Colorado dispensary, focuses on certified organic, sustainable agriculture and a zero waste process. L’Eagle is the first dispensary to receive the certifiably green designation by Denver’s Cannabis Sustainability Work Group, recognizing the use of environmental resources and business management practices. The working group promotes non-regulatory sustainability strategies, best management practices manual, the certification does not yet address cultivation standards.
All in all, there are many businesses within the cannabis industry aiming to promote sustainable and green practices. And while it may take a while for these practices to be adopted on a wide scale commercial level, at least the conversation has been started. In fact, there are even advocacy groups you can join today to do your part in spreading sustainability awareness.
The Cannabis Sustainability Workgroup is a great organization that hosts sustainability symposiums to help educate attendees on the latest tools, techniques and technologies for efficient and safe cannabis production. The group is a big factor in sustainable thinking within the cannabis industry and showcases top experts from across the country presenting on the industry’s key environmental challenges and best management practices.
In a Private Letter Ruling published on Friday, the IRS said that a battery added to a solar pv system a full year after solar installation was completed is eligible for a the full 30% ITC – as long as it is 100% powered by solar.
The IRS published a Private Letter Ruling last Friday, responding to a request to determine whether, the cost of installing energy storage to be integrated into a residential PV system would qualify as a “qualified solar electric property expenditure” eligible for the Investment Tax Credit (ITC).
The agency noted that the energy storage system in question has software that controls the battery such that charging only occurs when the PV system is producing energy and only up to the solar array’s maximum output.
The letter referenced that the IRS has already ruled that when installing a solar water heating system, the hot water tank itself was also included in the 30% ITC tax credit if at least half of the energy used in the tank was from sunlight.
In the final ruling paragraph, the IRS again references the 100% requirement of energy coming from solar PV:
The Congress purposefully chose to include a 50 percent usage requirement in the definition of “qualified solar water heating property”, but the Congress did not include such language in the definition of “qualified solar electric property.”
The IRS’s interpretation of utility scales facilities is more nuanced. Facilities must be charged at least 75% by solar energy to qualify for the ITC, and the value of the credit is proportionally applied with the amount of solar power charging the hardware.
In May of 2017, utility Tucson Electric Power (TEP) signed a power contract for the output of a 100MW farm at under 3¢ per kilowatt-hour (kWh). Along with the deal came an energy storage component that brought the dispatchable portion of the deal “well under 4.5¢/kWh.”
According to some analysts, the structuring of this deal depended upon the ITC ruling and 100% of the electricity coming from a super low-priced source like solar pv.
This ruling could also open the opportunity window for enormous renewable energy plus energy storage bids under a recent solicitation by Xcel.
This article was originally published.
Invest in your Grow not the IRS! Commercial growers in California that have high tax burdens that want to lower their operating costs and increase their margins do so by investing in solar electricity & battery systems. The federal government alone will pay 30% of the cost of the solar system via the Investment Tax Credit (ITC). Thats money you were paying to the IRS and never seeing again. Instead you are investing back into your operations, lowering your operating costs and increasing your profit margins. Contact us today to learn how much you can can in tax credits on this years taxes.
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Veterans, we need your help. If you are or know a veteran suffering from PTSD please volunteer to participate in the science based “We Can Study” administered by Suzanne Sisley MD of the Scottsdale Research Institute (SRI). SRI is currently in need of 40 volunteers for the second phase of a pilot study. The mission is to collect objective information about the efficacy of cannabis-based treatments for PTSD and other disorders. PTSD is one of the most prevalent illness affecting our veterans today. It’s paramount that we conduct studies such as this with controlled scientific data for analysis to help our 2.7 million service members who have been to the war zones of Iraq and Afghanistan since 2001. Go to http://www.wecanstudy.org to volunteer today. 
Canna Solar 