As you come in to land at Skellefteå airport in the far north of Sweden, you are greeted by a wooden air traffic control tower poking up from an endless forest of pine and spruce. After boarding a biogas bus into town, you glide past wooden apartment blocks and wooden schools, cross a wooden road bridge and pass a wooden multistorey car park, before finally reaching the centre, now home to one of the tallest new wooden buildings in the world. …Skellefteå runs on 100% renewable energy from hydropower and wind. And now, nosing 20 storeys above the low-rise skyline, Skellefteå has a fitting monument to its carbon-cutting credentials. The Sara Cultural Centre and its towering Wood Hotel stand as beacons of what it is possible to do with timber – and store about 9,000 tonnes of carbon from the atmosphere in the process.