This white paper and a new interactive dashboard with a Sankey diagram provides a quantitative view of the US and Canadian forest products sector. There are about 1850 operating mills in north America that use wood as their primary input to produce products that many of us take for granted. These products produced from trees are commonplace in the forms of packaging and shipping boxes, lumber and other wood-based construction materials, flooring, furniture, tissue, and many other less obvious uses including the production of wood pellets. As the white paper and dashboard show, the export pellet sector uses only about 3.2% of the primary harvest directly from the forest.
The Province is supporting several Vancouver-Island-based projects that will create jobs. …The Government of B.C. is contributing as much as $700,000 toward capital projects located in Cobble Hill and Mill Bay, and $50,000 for a planning project in Gold River through the Province’s $180-million BC Manufacturing Jobs Fund. In Mill Bay, Kinsol Timber Systems will receive as much as $500,000 to build a pre-fabrication facility at their operating site to increase capacity for mass-timber production. The facility will add a nail-laminated timber line, increase its sawn-timber and glue-laminated-timber fabrication and establish a new panelized wall line. In Cobble Hill, Nexus Modular Solutions will receive as much as $200,000 to expand and upgrade its existing facility and purchase new machinery. …Gold River Aquafarms has been awarded as much as $50,000 toward final stage planning to assess the viability of retrofitting a former pulp and paper mill warehouse for a salmon-processing facility and aquafarm.
PEACE RIVER, AB – In every sector of the economy, the fight against climate change is both an economic as well as an environmental imperative. …Canada has continued to support initiatives that enhance the competitiveness of the forest sector, its contribution to the bioeconomy and the resilience of the communities that rely on it. In 2021, Natural Resources Canada contributed $8.5 million through the Investments in Forest Industry Transformation program to Mercer Peace River Pulp Ltd. Natural Resources Canada announced that this contribution has resulted in a new, state-of-the-art woodroom. The equipment installed in the new woodroom includes innovative and first-in-kind debarking, chipping and monitoring technologies. These new processes are improving how wood fibre is procured and processed at the mill, resulting in a more optimized use of wood fibre. …By using advanced equipment and processes, Mercer’s new woodroom represents a step forward in promoting sustainable resource management and business practices. 
Researchers at Princeton University and IMT Mines Albi—CNRS in France have uncovered the mechanism that enables iron to help convert waste such as wood chips and other cellulose-rich biomass into graphene. Graphene, a sheet of pure carbon just one atom thick, is commonly made via chemical vapour deposition, a process frequently used in the semiconductor industry to produce uniform coatings. This technique often hinges on hazardous chemicals and expensive technologies. …In search of an environmentally friendly researchers turned to underused sources of biomass as a starting material for the process. Most of that biomass is found in the cellulose of cell walls of plants. Cellulose has proven difficult to convert into highly ordered carbon materials such as graphene without the use of toxic or rare earth metal catalysts due to its chemical bonds. But they found that an iron oxide catalyst could do the trick.
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Massachusetts uses 359 million cubic feet of wood each year. We import 98% of this wood, leaving it to others to sort out the climate and ecological impact. It is time to pull our heads out of the sand and ask how wood can truly fit into an effective climate plan for the state (
6.4 percent of textiles are produced with wood-based feedstock, according to sustainability nonprofit Textile Exchange. With deforestation responsible for up to 10 percent of greenhouse gas emissions, pivoting to ‘forest-positive’ sourcing for man-made cellulosic fibers (MMCF) such as viscose, lyocell, modal and acetate, has never been more critical.” It’s always been more than just chopping down and replanting trees, since trees and forests support a complex network of biodiversity and life. The proposed solution is man-made cellulosic fibers (MMCF), which are “regenerated fibers usually made from the dissolved wood pulp or ‘cellulose’ of trees. For Julia Kozlik, textile program lead at the Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification (PEFC), this issue is at the forefront of her mind. According to Kozlik, “The market share of MMCFs verified by PEFC and the Forest Stewardship Council has been increasing.”
PARIS — A crane hoisted massive oak trusses from a barge and onto Notre Dame Cathedral on Tuesday in a spectacular operation to rebuild the fire-ravaged monument and bring it back to life by December 2024. …“I think it’s a magical moment,” said Minister Clement Beaune, noting that the Seine will be at the center of the Paris Olympics in 2024. Gen. Jean-Louis Georgelin said that even the heavy traffic expected during the summer Games won’t stop work on the world-renowned cathedral. “We will work for the cathedral during the Olympics in order to be ready in December 2024,” he said. …Notre Dame, which overlooks the historic core of Paris from an island on the Seine, was consumed by flames in 2019. It was decided to rebuild the monument using methods of yore. Expert carpenters used medieval techniques to construct the trusses, which measure 14 to 16 meters wide and 12 to 13 meters high.
The Irish Minister of State at the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine has called for Ireland to join the Timber in Construction Working Group. The Timber in Construction Working Group works to increase the use of timber by challenging regulations and standards that currently make timber use difficult. The group is also focused on boosting the use of home-grown timber. Timber in Construction Working Group brings together industry experts and Government Departments and Agencies, with an independent Chair. The Department of Agriculture, Food and Marine will be the secretariat to the group and a Chair will be appointed once the group’s membership is complete. Using timber in the built environment is crucial in reaching climate targets. Wood helps store carbon in buildings and reduces dependence on materials from non-renewable sources.
