Cannabis industry group pushes ‘green seal’ and tax credits – Times Union

ALBANY A certification process highlighting energy-efficient cannabis cultivators and a tax credit to complement it are key sustainability proposals of an industry white paper released Tuesday by New Yorks Castetter Cannabis Group. The paper also called for state regulators to develop a strategy for data collection and analysis of license holders operations.

Its recommendations reinforce lawmakers urgency to minimize harm to the the states fledgling industry, but suggest a divergent strategy centered on incentives rather than efficiency limits.

Were advocating for a performance-based approach, said Kate Hruby, the groups lead policy analyst and co-author of the paper.

In mid-March, before adult-use cannabis was legalized in New York, state Assemblywoman Patricia Fahy, D-Albany, had proposed language for a bill that would ensure the budding industry is designed to comply with emissions standards that would reduce its potential impact on the states ambitious climate goals.

If passed, the legislation pushing cannabis growers to environmental conscious practices would put New York in a position to regulate them up-front. In contrast, early legalization states such as Colorado and California have circled back to try to cut down on their industries emissions once growers were already licensed and running.

The language of Fahys bill, which includes limits on lighting power density and mandates for efficient heating and coolingsystems for indoor grow operations, was mirrored in a Senate bill introduced in April by state Sen. Michelle Hinchey, D-Saugerties.

What our bill does is it makes energy efficiency a priority in the indoor growing process by requiring applicants to submit their efficiency plans as part of their application, Hinchey said, noting that the specifics of the bill are still undergoing revisions. Were setting resource efficiency requirements for growers to make sure that we don't have to go back and do this again, down the road.

But Hruby and her Castetter Cannabis Group (CCG) co-authors, whose leaders draw on their experience growing and processing regulated hemp which is low-THC cannabis as well as their knowledge of the legacy market, feel the piecemeal industry is ripe with innovators after its long existence in the shadows. They argue fringe innovations need to be encouraged before specific efficiency caps and technology mandates are introduced.

We want New York to be the most innovative when it comes to energy efficiency, but we have to get the information first, Hruby said. The industry is concerned that it's going to be overly burdened when it hasn't even gotten off the ground.

Both the legislative proposal and CCGs white paper focus on the energy use of indoor grow operations, which produce more emissions than outdoor grows. A study published this spring by Colorado State University's Hailey M. Summers, Evan Sproul and Jason C. Quinn notes that a considerable amount of legal cannabis is cultivated indoors primarily for quality control and security, though the CCG white paper noted that on the black market, indoor grows also served to conceal illicit operations.

Summers and her colleagues looked at greenhouse gas emissions over the life cycle of indoor cannabis operations across the United States, and their modeling found that for every kilogram of dried cannabis flower, growers emitted gasses equivalent to between 2,283 and 5,184 kilograms of carbon dioxide.

The higher carbon cost of indoor grows has led some farmers, including the Hudson Valleys Gail and Amy Hepworth of Hempire State Growers, to advocate for the benefits of growing hemp and adult-use cannabis plants outdoors. While the sisters do note rapidly improving indoor grow systems offer more yield and protection against adverse weather, they are proud of the outdoor grow system at their organic farm.

It would be an excellent integrated plant in the agricultural community, said Amy Hepworth, the operations president and lead grower. She said its a crop that takes significant time and management they even use blockchain technology to track each plant but she loves to grow it. Its like, we know it's not easy to grow tomatoes outdoors, but they grow outdoors. And they're delicious, aren't they?

But Aldous Lloyd, CCGs cultivation analyst, said that while certain products such as cannabis grown for extracts might work well outdoors, eliminating indoor growth for cultivation of smokable cannabis flower is not practical. He thinks the industry will need to consider how to innovate within greenhouse technologies.

The problem with outdoor is contamination. You have to think about all kinds of funguses and viruses, those fall on the plants, Lloyd said, noting that most outdoor grows are not as controlled.

Several researchers at Berkeleys Cannabis Research Center have been considering these issues in their assessments of the state of the research on cannabis and the environment.

We found very few scientific, published studies on the topic, said Ariani C. Wartenberg, who co-authored a review article on the subject earlier this year.

Wartenberg said she thought the lack of data was striking given the magnitude of the industry. Her article noted that like any crop, cannabis can have adverse impacts on the environment if grown outdoors as well as indoors; in California, and in other places where the climate allows robust outdoor growth of cannabis, there is a tendency that predates legalization for growers to tuck their cannabis crops in out-of-sight locations where the grows can have a substantial negative impact on particular ecosystems and wildlife.

Van Butsic, a scholar in the group who has been doing cannabis research for about seven years, said he got into the field because of the lack of systematic takes on cannabis-related topics.

Butsic said that while further research is needed to understand how to make its farming increasingly efficient, cannabis can probably be grown sustainably multiple ways.

He noted that a disproportionate amount of attention has been paid to cannabis environmental impacts compared to other crops, especially as the industry has come out of the shadows. In the end, growers in the United States have an impact on the environment even when they are working in the illicit market and not as licensed cultivators.

For local governments, it has been difficult to balance complaints from constituents, Bustic said. They say things like, we have too many cannabis farms, we need to make really restrictive permitting processes, without realizing that all the cannabis farms that they're upset about are already illegal and are not going to be joining the permit process, he said.

And for California, which has a more advanced market where the environmental standards and licensing process are already restrictive, Bustic said, we need to focus on the people who are not in the legal market and try to get them to join the legal market. I think that's where you'll see the most environmental gain.

New Yorks government leaders have yet to nominate the leadership of the new industrys regulatory bodies, the Office of Cannabis Management and the Cannabis Control Board. Once formed, they will define how licensing will operate within the state.

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Cannabis industry group pushes 'green seal' and tax credits - Times Union