This week in buildings, industry and land-use decarbonization news, Marijuana Business Daily has a story speculating that rescheduling marijuana could unlock opportunities for the cannabis-growing business to become more energy efficient and environmentally friendly. Marijuana is scheduled alongside heroin and LSD as having no medical value, worse than fentanyl, which has killed an estimated 151,000 Americans in the last two years; rescheduling it could unlock growers’ ability to tap federal funds and tax credits for efficiency. 

While marijuana cultivation could become more energy efficient, satisfying the munchies at an electrified restaurant would require a significant investment by its owners, as the Vancouver Sun reported. A study by a local restaurant trade association estimated that electrifying its members would cost $800,000 Canadian, which includes downtime to retrofit locations. 

Artificial intelligence has been leading to higher demands for parts of the industry as new data centers spring up, but Infoworld wrote a story saying that the technology’s energy use varies by the kind of processor used. Central processing units can handle most of the workload for AI, and some major firms like Oracle are working on hardware that uses them. Much of the AI training has to be done using “general processing units” (GPUs) such as Nvidia’s H100 model that uses 80 billion transistors and requires costly immersion cooling methods. CPUs handle the tasks for software to run correctly, while GPUs can complete repetitive and simplistic tasks more quickly, according to Amazon Web Services. 

A group of environmentalists and building decarbonization advocates want the California Energy Commission to pass regulations that effectively require replacing air conditioners with heat pumps, as Canary Media reported. The commission has to change the state’s energy code for new buildings every three years, and the current one would not go into effect until 2026. The code cannot mandate heat pumps, but it could set standards so that they are the most attractive option for cooling. 

In other state news, the Illinois PIRG (Public Interest Research Group) is lauding the passage of new legislation that will raise efficiency standards for lightbulbs in the state. The law phases out fluorescent lights and is expected to save consumers $1.5 billion while avoiding 2.2 million metric tons of carbon emissions. 

Read more about decarbonization efforts in this week’s Intelligence Report: