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.

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.

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