Pot’s not green. The $3.5 billion U.S. cannabis market is emerging as one of the nation’s most power-hungry industries, with the 24-hour demands of thousands of indoor growing sites taxing aging electricity grids and unraveling hard-earned gains in energy conservation.

For the third time in three years, Fluence Bioengineering, an Austin company that makes lights for indoor plant growing, has moved into a yet-bigger manufacturing facility.

We speak with Randy Mortensen, who heads up a division of Lighting Science focused on cannabis and indoor agriculture.

Electricity-intensive cannabis production has a big carbon footprint, but with legalization, some eco-conscious growers want to make pot a shining model of sustainability.

Bruce Kennedy ~ WeedWorthy ~

LED lamps, while still controversial, are being touted by some cannabis entrepreneurs as a low-energy, environmentally-friendly way to control the industry’s costs.

As cannabis has increasingly gone legitimate, electric utilities have struggled to cope with the intensive energy demands of the proliferating industry.