BOSTON — As Boston-area cities and towns ready their application processes and regulations for the state’s recreational marijuana licenses, Resource Innovation Institute commends the Massachusetts Cannabis Control Commission for revising lighting regulations for larger cultivators, those with more than 10,000 sq. ft. of canopy.
“Resource Innovation Institute applauds Massachusetts’ Cannabis Control Commission for working hard to make sure stakeholders have been and will continue to be engaged in the process of rolling out the country’s most ambitious cannabis energy regulations. The Commission has ensured that the spirit and intent of the law recommended by the Dept. of Energy Resources is being carried out in a manner that is functional for cannabis operators, lighting manufacturers and other stakeholders,” said Derek Smith, Executive Director, Resource Innovation Institute.
The recently clarified guidelines state that the “Lighting Power Densities (LPD) for cultivation space must not exceed an average of 36 watts per gross square foot of active and growing space canopy, but for Tier 2 a requirement of 50 watts per gross square foot of active or growing canopy unless otherwise determined in guidelines issued by the Commission.”
As more legal marijuana markets come online across the United States and globally, communities and the utilities that serve them are grappling with increased energy usage and a method for establishing energy regulation. The Resource Innovation Institute is committed to advancing resource efficiency to fuel the cannabis economy. More than 100 cultivation facilities across the United States have already participated in RII’s Cannabis PowerScore survey, which benchmarks and aggregates power consumption data across a range of grow environments, climate zones and geographies to determine the most resource efficient approaches to cannabis cultivation.
The non-profit has Massachusetts-based foundation funding to support stakeholders, including cannabis operators, utilities, construction professionals and others, through the integration of the new law. One expected outcome is that RII will assemble peer-reviewed guidance on cultivating under LEDs and other efficient lighting choices.
Measuring is key in the effort to reduce cannabis energy impacts, and RII encourages cultivators to see where they stand by participating in the Cannabis PowerScore at https://www.cannabispowerscore.org/ . Drawing from the Cannabis PowerScore aggregate and anonymized data, RII will co-author the regulated cannabis industry’s first-ever energy report in Summer 2018.
RII will participate in the MJBizCon NEXT Sustainability Experience in New Orleans May 9-11. The Sustainability Experience will walk people through an exercise of defining what sustainability means to them and then explaining the breadth of issues that fall under sustainability, including energy efficiency.
