Study: Wooden Buildings Are Cheaper And Cleaner
Although it may seem counter-intuitive, it would be better if we built buildings from wood than from concrete, brick, aluminum and steel.
We use millions of tons of these modern materials every year. They have many valuable properties, but are energy-intensive to create, accounting for around 16% of the entire planets’ fossil fuel production. Instead we could be using wood, which is also strong, renewable, and plentiful – we use only a fraction of the world’s available forestry resources.
Our research, published in the Journal of Sustainable Forestry, estimated that the world’s forests contain about 385 billion cubic meters of wood, with an additional 17 billion cubic meters growing each year. A mere 3.4 billion cubic meters is harvested each year, mostly for subsistence fuel burning; the rest rots, burns in fires, or adds to forests’ density.
Swapping steel, concrete, or brick for wood and specially engineered wood equivalents would drastically reduce global carbon dioxide emissions, fossil fuel consumption and would represent a renewable resource. What’s more, managed properly this can be done without loss of biodiversity or carbon storage capacity.
In our study undertaken by scientists from the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies and the University of Washington’s College of the Environment we evaluated various scenarios including leaving forests untouched, burning wood for energy and use of wood as a construction material.
From Architecture & Design: architectureanddesign.com.
Latest News
Oregon Truckers File Suit Against State
Rob Freres, president of Oregon-based Freres Engineered Wood, a manufacturer of lumber, veneer, plywood and mass timber, has thrown in his support for a lawsuit filed by the Oregon Trucking Assn. and three Oregon-based trucking companies against the state of Oregon for overcharging truckers under the weight-mile tax.
Hasslacher Enters North America
Austria-based Hasslacher group is acquiring a stake in Element5, a mass timber producer specializing in the design, manufacture and assembly of modern engineered timber buildings. Based near Toronto, Can., Element5 employs more than 100 and produces cross-laminated timber and glued laminated timber for the North American market.
Hampton Lumber Purchases Rebuilt
Atlas Holdings has entered into an agreement to sell RedBuilt, LLC to Hampton Lumber Mills, Inc. Atlas formed RedBuilt with the acquisition of the commercial division of Trus Joist from Weyerhaeuser Co. in 2009. Over the next 14 years, the company became an industry leader in the engineering, design and manufacturing of proprietary wood-based structural solutions serving the low-rise commercial construction market. The transaction is anticipated to close in the first quarter of 2024.
Peak NA, Fehr Purchase RPM
Registration is now available for the 2024 Western Wood Producers Assn. (WWPA) Annual Meeting. The meeting will be held at the Hotel Indigo in Vancouver, Wash., April 14-16. To register for the event visit, https://www.wwpa.org/about-wwpa/annual-meeting. To take advantage of the group rate, visit the Hotel Indigo website, and use group code WWP. The deadline for the group rate is March 14, or until the room block is sold out…
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