Sustainability

Through building construction and building use, the construction industry (cement and steel) contributes nearly 40% of total U.S. anthropogenic carbon emissions to the environment. CLT buildings, on the contrary, have a low carbon footprint. Because trees remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere through photosynthesis, the carbon stored in CLT panels helps offset the greenhouse gases released in making building materials and in the actual construction. 

As with all wood products, the benefits of CLT include the fact that it comes from a renewable and sustainable resource. Wood also has a low carbon footprint by continuing to store carbon absorbed during a tree’s growing cycle, and avoiding greenhouse gas emissions that are often the result of using other building products that require large amounts of fossil fuels to manufacture. In fact, between the carbon stored in the panels, and emissions avoided by not using concrete, a CLT apartment building can keep about 300 metric tons of carbon out of the atmosphere. 

The biggest driving force behind the turn toward CLT is a growing awareness among architects and developers about their field’s contribution to climate change. Concrete and steel require enormous amounts of energy to produce and transport, generating more than a ton of carbon dioxide per ton of steel or concrete. Wood, on the other hand, even engineered wood like CLT, which requires additional energy to cut and press into sections, is far more environmentally friendly. A ton of bricks requires four times the amount of energy to produce as a ton of CLT wood. Concrete requires five times the amount of energy, steel 24 times, and aluminum 126 times.

When CLT is used to build high-rise towers, the carbon savings can be enormous. The tons of carbon locked into a CLT building are enough to offset 20 years of its daily operations, meaning that for the first two decades of its life, the building isn’t just carbon neutral: it is actually carbon negative. Rather than producing greenhouse gases, CLT buildings fight them off. 

CLT has also better performance. It is, for example, five times more insulative than concrete and 350 times more so than steel. That means less energy is needed to heat and cool a wooden CLT building. 

The environmental benefits of cross-laminated timber have been widely demonstrated. Carbon sequestration of CLT is one of the most important environmental benefit. While trees remove CO2 from the atmosphere, timber keeps that CO2 trapped inside it.

The European timber used is from sustainably managed forests.