Green Building

With the green building market estimated to reach as high as $140 billion by 2013, securing a strong place for wood is essential to the wood products industry’s future growth. That means both telling the positive story of wood’s renewable, energy efficient advantages, as well as defending against anti-wood bias in rating systems. Strong, unified industry support is essential as the green building battlefield continues to spread from the state to the federal level.

Promoting Wood’s Environmental Advantages

More attention is being paid than ever before to how buildings impact the environment, including the choices of materials used in construction and how those materials help conserve energy during operation. Wood is the perfect green building material because it is renewable, stores carbon that reduces greenhouse gases, and is energy efficient. Winning acceptance for wood is a challenge, however, as competing materials and certain environmental groups seek to control the U.S. green building market.

Additionally, some green building rating systems, such as the U.S. Green Building Council’s well-known LEED rating system, contain scientifically indefensible biases against wood and many U.S.-sourced wood products. LEED is aggressively seeking a government-sanctioned monopoly on rating systems which would seriously harm the use of U.S. wood products.

Here are some additional links to information and resources:

• Green Globes
• NAHB Green Building Guidelines
• LEED
• Fact Sheets
• FAQ

 

The industry has fought hard over the past decade to set the record straight on wood and has made impressive progress:

• Helped bring the wood-friendly Green Globes rating system to the U.S., offering the first competition to LEED, and secured Green Globes inclusion in the federal schools and stimulus bills;
• Prevented LEED-only legislation in 40 states and won adoption in 19 states of the Green Globes rating system;
• Influenced green criteria being included in the ASHRAE green building minimum requirements standard;
• Gained a position on the International Code Council’s oversight committee for its new green building model code—the only wood interest on a committee that will write the first national green building code that can be implemented like a mandatory building code;
• Served on the Green Globes and National Green Building Standard Committees, assuring wood products are rewarded for their environmental characteristics and positive contributions.

WoodWorks Carbon Calculator Wood products continue to store carbon absorbed by the trees during their growth cycle, keeping it out of the atmosphere indefinitely. Using wood in place of fossil fuel-intensive materials also "avoids" greenhouse gases that would have been emitted during manufacturing. Now, it is possible to quantify these benefits for wood buildings.