Miller Hull

Living Building Challenge Services Director Chris Hellstern will be on a panel to discuss “Missing the Forest: How Forest Practices Impact the Carbon Embodied in Mass Timber” at the Carbon Friendly Forest Conference.

Session details:
The drive to advance sustainability in the built environment is fueling demand for greater transparency and rigorous documentation of environmental impacts of materials and their supply chains, specifically around carbon. Despite significant and growing interest among green builders in using wood, and mass timber products in particular, supply chain traceability and the embodied carbon impacts attributable to wood products generated from different regions, forest management systems, and certifications remains a black box.

Research in Pacific Northwest Douglas-fir forests from Ecotrust and the University of Washington that debuted at Carbon Friendly Forestry in 2017 clearly illustrated how forest practices that go above-and-beyond minimum Oregon and Washington regulations deliver additional carbon storage which can be directly translated into an “upstream” embodied carbon benefit associated with the wood produced from these alternative management approaches.

This year, we will share new research from Ecotrust and The Miller Hull Partnership exploring the impact that the inclusion of forest practices brings to estimates of the embodied carbon of mass timber products and whole-building Life Cycle Assessments. The scale of “upstream” forest carbon storage factors from alternative sourcing options will be compared to the other stages in the wood product life cycle and rolled up into real-world buildings to compare the impact of wood sourcing decisions with those of alternative non-wood designs employing concrete and steel.

David Diaz, Director of Forestry Technology & Analytics at Ecotrust, will be speaking alongside Chris.