Temperatures are hitting all-time highs across the globe, and the news is filled with imagery of the most dramatic fires in history. Hurricanes pack a heavier punch than ever before, knocking the wind out of all of us. Torrential rains flash-flood cities and leave displaced people in their wake. We could all use a break from all this record breaking, but the destruction will escalate until our entire planet is completely carbon neutral.

Many industrial sectors, including construction, are still not active enough in curbing climate change. For example, new buildings have huge potential as carbon stores if wood were used more in construction n, and when building from wood, one third of the climate emissions from construction can be reduced. Cement production is the largest source of man-made CO2 emissions. All housing construction should be done with wood. The non-renewable materials used in concrete, such as sand, lime, and in sometimes even clean water, as well as the energy needed for production, must be saved for more important uses.

Fortunately, Finland’s new government understands this and lists several items in its program for increasing wood construction, including: reforms to construction regulations to speed up wood construction; improvements to the sector’s export opportunities; measures to increase the added value of industries that use domestic, renewable raw materials; processing wood to the highest degree possible; incentives to increase wooden construction; channelling R&D funding into wood construction; and investing in more training in the sector.

Together with the government and wood industry operators, Puuinfo is ready to share all its knowledge, know-how and networks with the construction industry so that we can all make the difficult but long overdue leap towards sustainable low-carbon construction.

Anu Turunen
Managing Director, Puuinfo

Read the article in Finnish here.