HILLSBORO, OR The Hillsboro, Oregon, City Council approved land use rules and regulations for the Cannabis industry. Now, licensed recreational marijuana establishments can operate within the Hillsboro city limits. This ruling set in motion the development of a major 20 million dollar energy efficient marijuana grow facility - Walnut Industrial Park. It is hoped that this facility will be a demonstration project of how the cannabis industry can use power responsibly by dramatically reducing power consumption.

This 130,000-square-foot indoor marijuana grow facility will be a community of growers, processors, wholesalers, research facilities and testing labs.  The vision of this project is to address a number of critical concerns pertaining to the emerging marijuana industry. It is common knowledge that this new industry is having a huge impact on the power grid as well and many environmental concerns. Oregon has the chance to start this industry off on the right foot. There is already a huge energy impact on the infrastructure of Colorado and Washington State. Oregon has the unique opportunity to learn from those states and set a new standard of environmental and energy best practices.

The plan is to develop a marijuana grow facility that will embrace the best of technology, to achieve optimum energy savings and best practices. This will help growers to be even more successful and competitive long term. Now that this industry has come out of the shadows, it is time to treat it like any other industrial endeavor, by reducing overhead and maximizing efficiencies.

To achieve these goals, there is a team of energy experts, engineers, state agencies, and people that are passionate about meeting these objectives. There is a commitment to make sure that this development will become a demonstration project on how the recreational Marijuana industry should operate going forward in the State of Oregon as well as an example for the rest of the nation.

Because of the size of the facility, it allows for the development of centralized services to maximize energy savings. The building has a 4-acre roof which provides the opportunity to install up to a 2 megawatt solar array, thus reducing the carbon footprint even more.