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Dan Sutton always assumed cannabis had to be grown indoors.

The former technology professional was new to the pot industry in 2012 when he founded Tantalus Labs. The stereotypical image of a large industrial warehouse, with pot plants growing under bright lights and fans, loomed large in his mind.

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But when Sutton asked academics, horticulturists and engineers for advice, they all told him that no crop on the planet is grown indoors on a commercial scale.

“It just doesn’t really make a huge amount of sense to replace the energy of sunlight, which is so abundant and obviously healthy for leafy green crops, with a synthetic alternative,” he said.

So he was focused on plant health, not sustainability, when he decided to build SunLab, a 120,000-square-foot greenhouse in Maple Ridge. It was only after he crunched the numbers that he realized it would use 90 per cent less electricity than a traditional indoor facility, he said.