Wood is Good: Trees are green, too
Source: Winston-Salem Journal, by Dr. Robert Cooper
July 02, 2007
Developed by the U.S. Green Building Council, the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) program seeks to provide architects and builders with guidelines and parameters for construction projects to ensure that they are environmentally friendly and efficient. It’s a great concept and has gained popularity with local and state officials when it comes time to award contracts for new construction, but the program needs some major revisions if it is ever to be embraced by the private landowners in North Carolina or truly promote energy-efficient buildings in our state.
As it is written now, the LEED program gives little or no value to the use of our only renewable natural resource, wood, and actively promotes the use of wood substitutes such as bamboo that grow on a shorter rotation schedule than our home-grown trees. Its aggressive marketing campaign, with more than 40 full-time staff and a greater than $10 million annual budget, targets the use of traditional wood products, encouraging architects to seek alternative products.
This program and its respective marketing campaign pose a serious threat to the more than 600,000 North Carolinians who own private forests. A majority of these forest owners have made the investment in their lands that will be someday realized in a timber harvest of some type as their trees are turned into one or more of the 5,000 wood products that Americans use every day. These landowners, who own three-fourths of the state’s 17.6 million acres of forest land, support environmentally friendly and energy-efficient building practices. However, any building code program should be based on scientific information, not just one group’s idea of what is right.
There is no question that this green building code is popular because it espouses sound ecological concepts within the construction community, but here is where we encounter the consequences of a program based on good intentions and not rooted in science. The LEED program’s sheer existence depends on its ability to convince environmentally concerned elected officials and citizens to support its established principles and standards of the program. It is a feel-good program developed in a boardroom with little or no input from the private landowner.
This is what is at stake when we discuss generic “feel-good” programs such as the LEED program. Wood products need to be identified as preferential, environmentally friendly building materials. Life-cycle analysis, which is an analytical approach to the evaluation of energy used in building products, consistently shows that wood-products manufacturing consumes significantly less energy than the manufacturing of non-wood alternatives. A comparison of wood-frame and steel-frame homes in Minneapolis and Atlanta showed that the wood-frame homes had less carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions in their development than those with steel. Steel, concrete, bamboo and cork may sound like solid alternatives, but the facts show that they are not more environmentally sound than wood products. The use of alternatives proves to be a disincentive to landowners growing trees.
When the LEED program does include wood, it excludes nearly all the locally grown wood products since it demands the use of Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certified wood. FSC, one of several standards developed for certifying sustainable forestry practices, is not a financially realistic option for the average family forest owner because of its complexity and built-in costs. The majority of FSC forests are found outside of the United States. It is not surprising that the FSC program was developed by the same people developing and supporting the existing LEED evaluation system.
Fortunately, there are other systems for certifying sustainable forestry that are more accessible to landowners in North Carolina. Namely, the American Tree Farm Program is a credible and effective forest-certification system that has stood the test of time and is free to the landowner.
Good intentions can sometimes have unintended consequences. This is the case with the LEED program. It is time for the LEED program to re-evaluate its position on wood products for construction. It is also time for local municipalities to try to understand the significance of other building codes such as the Green Globes program, which includes the use of American Tree Farm certified wood. Does it really make sense to decorate a North Carolina town hall or library with wood grown in South America instead of some North Carolina-grown hickory, cherry or pine just to satisfy a flawed standard?
¦ Dr. Robert Cooper, a retired physician, is on the N.C. Tree Farm Executive Committee. He and his wife, Jean, live on their tree farm in the Winston-Salem area.
