To achieve the goals of Canada’s climate change plan and get us to net-zero emissions by 2050, all industries need to play their part. The building sector ranks third in terms of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, meaning that reducing the sector’s carbon footprint is crucial to achieve the goals of Canada’s climate change plan. A significant opportunity to reduce the building industry’s carbon footprint is constructing multi-story buildings with wood. “Tall wood buildings can play a big role in helping lower Canada’s GHG emissions because they store carbon and sequester it for long periods of time, and because wood can replace more carbon-intensive materials,” says Patrick Lavoie, an FPInnovations senior sustainability scientist. To truly understand whether building with wood is more eco-friendly than building with other construction materials, it’s imperative to use the science-based Life Cycle Assessment (LCA): an environmental management tool that measures the impact of a product on the environment.
With over three decades of expertise and experience in structural design, Fast + Epp is a proud early adopter of mass timber construction. Mass timber presents a number of opportunities for design teams who are willing to venture outside of traditional construction methods. For the right project, and with the right team in place, a mass timber building can be a commercial success that stands out from the crowd. Case in point? Fast + Epp’s innovative new company headquarters. The first office building in Vancouver, BC to use mass timber as a structural material, the new headquarters has given Fast + Epp an incredible opportunity to experiment with new construction technologies in their own space. Fast + Epp is at the forefront of a mass timber movement, showing the world the possibilities mass timber unlocks for the built environment’s future. Learn about five mass timber projects in the Studio Spotlight.
At the Element5 facility in St. Thomas, we use Ontario wood to make cross laminated timber, glulam, and other value-added mass timber components. We are helping build a future where sustainable, mass timber production and construction is an important economic engine of a strong circular economy. As such, it is critical that we do our part ensure our forests are sustainably managed through a commitment to responsible procurement practices. On April 16, 2021, we received Forest Stewardship Council Chain of Custody certification from SCS Global Services, a leader in environmental and sustainability certification and one of the first certification bodies accredited by the Forest Stewardship Council in 1996. …We are proud to bear the internationally recognized FSC label which provides consumers with an assurance that the mass timber elements they buy from us are made from responsibly sourced wood that has been verified to meet FSC’s strict environmental and social standards.
The built environment can be a behemoth when it comes to contributing to climate change, but the reality is not set in stone. Advancements in the production of building materials and substituting greener components can make a difference. Buildings generate almost 40% of annual global greenhouse gas emissions, according to WoodWorks Regional Director Chelsea Drenick, who spoke at a Home and Environment webinar hosted by the Housing Action Coalition on Earth Day. …Provided that it has been sourced from a sustainably managed forest, wood is the foremost building material for reducing greenhouse gas emissions because it is 40% carbon by mass, Drenick said. …Studies have shown wood used as a building material can actually increase the number of trees in a forest. Data from The Forest History Society shows that net tree growth in the U.S. has been steadily outpacing tree removal since 1952.
Scientists at ETH Zurich in Switzerland have found a way to make wood produce small but useful amounts of electricity when compressed… The team manipulated a property of wood … called piezoelectricity, which refers to the tiny amounts of electricity discharged when the materials are compressed. By using a fungus to remove a material called lignin from the cell walls of a small piece of balsa wood, the team made the wood vastly more compressible, with a piezoelectric output more than 50 times greater than normal. It could be possible to use such delignified wood to make biomedical or other electrical sensors, or to insert the wood into floorboards so that walking across them generates power to be stored in a battery and which could power lights or appliances, the team speculated. …The ETH breakthrough is an example of how growing numbers of experts are rediscovering wood as a go-to sustainable building material.
