Human history has been deeply influenced by the use of wood. Wherever people have lived close to trees, they have used wood – as a fuel, to make countless objects, to build homes and other structures. Wood is part of our common cultural heritage. While people appreciate its aesthetic qualities, research also suggests that buildings with many wooden features have a positive effect on our health, comfort and wellbeing.
In the coming decades, wood will be needed more than ever to meet the demands of rapidly developing societies while combating climate change and other environmental threats. Nowhere are the benefits of wood more apparent than in the construction sector.
The need for building materials is growing fast and the global floor area in buildings is expected to double to more than 415 billion square metres by 2050. While this is driven largely by urbanization and economic growth in emerging economies, many developed countries also face housing crises and the need to retrofit and renovate the existing building stock.
Today, the manufacturing of concrete, bricks and steel is responsible for 8-15% of global greenhouse gas emissions causing climate change. Substituting where possible those building materials with wood can contribute to climate change mitigation thanks to lower material manufacturing and processing emissions.
This is not the only climate benefit of using wood in construction. It’s well known, of course, that trees sequester carbon from the atmosphere while growing. Using sustainable wood in construction means that the carbon storage can be extended from the forest to the building – often for decades, or even centuries – while replanted trees continue the carbon sequestration process.
Wood is already manufactured into a variety of construction products, including structural elements, exterior and interior finishes, and insulation. In fact, most of today’s building components can be made from wood. And the possibilities are increasing with innovations in wood-based design and construction, including the increasing availability of engineered wood products. These include cross-laminated timber (CLT) panels, made from multiple layers of wood glued together at 90-degree angles to form super-strong panels, and laminated veneer lumber (LVL), made from veneers bonded together under heat and pressure.
Engineered wood panels allow for larger and taller wooden buildings, and offer improved performance in other areas such as fire and earthquake resistance. Currently, the tallest wooden building in the world is a 53m-high 18-storey student residence in Vancouver, Canada, completed in 2017. But even more ambitious proposals are being developed, including a 350m 70-storey skyscraper in Tokyo which would contain 180,000 cubic metres of wood.
Such buildings can store significant amounts of carbon. Stora Enso calculates that its CLT panels store around 730kg of carbon per cubic metre. They were recently used to construct the superstructure of Crome Court, a seven-storey student accommodation building on the University of East Anglia campus in the UK. The structure contains 1,680 cubic metres of CLT, storing 1,226 tonnes of carbon during its lifetime. With the building containing various carbon-reducing measures, it will take an estimated four years of continuous use before its emissions approach the amount of carbon stored within the structure.
Wood’s thermal properties can also improve a building’s energy performance. Energy use in buildings represents roughly one-third of global final energy consumption and accounts for nearly 20% of all greenhouse gas emissions. According to the International Energy Agency, energy demand in buildings could increase by 50% by 2050. When well-designed and installed, products such as CLT can control air-tightness and reduce heat loss, optimizing energy consumption for heating and cooling as well as improving people’s comfort, health and wellbeing.
Another advantage of using wood in construction is that it is a renewable resource, and can help the shift to a circular economy. Global use of materials is accelerating, with construction accounting for around 40% of all materials used. Rather than being extracted from quarries, mines and riverbeds, wood can be grown, and regrown, in well-managed forests and plantations that have a positive impact on biodiversity and ecosystem services.
An estimated 10-15% of construction materials – mainly concrete and brick – are wasted, while more than half the materials arising from buildings demolition are sent to landfill. By contrast, high-precision manufacturing and prefabrication reduce wood waste, both during manufacture and at the end of life. Waste wood from manufacturing, construction and demolition can be recycled, reused and manufactured into other products, and, at the end of their life, wood products can be burnt to provide bioenergy, substituting for fossil fuels.
Wood can also extend the life of buildings themselves. Refurbishments and retrofits can improve comfort, attractiveness and energy efficiency, while extensions and building adaptations using lightweight engineered wood products tend to require little-to-no strengthening of the existing structure or foundations. For example, rooftop extensions using semi-prefabricated CLT structures have great potential to ease urban housing pressure by allowing an increase in urban density while minimising disruption to existing residents during installation. A survey of the Greater London area suggested that rooftop extensions could provide 140,000 new homes. To give an example, at 150 London Road, Kingston-upon-Thames (UK) , Stora Enso supplied CLT to convert an office block into 15 apartments with a rooftop extension comprising eight duplexes.
Rooftop extensions can also provide extra value to buildings and income to building owners, which can help finance renovations to improve energy efficiency and aesthetics. This is highly relevant in the context of climate change: in the EU, for example, 23,000 homes need energy renovation every day for the next 30 years to meet Europe’s climate and energy targets.
There should be little surprise, then, that international recognition of the importance of wood in a sustainable, low-carbon future is growing. In 2017, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) event “Sustainable Wood for a Sustainable World” concluded that sustainable wood value chains are relevant for all 17 of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), especially for decent work and economic growth (SDG8), responsible consumption and production (SDG12), climate action (SDG13) and life on land (SDG15).
Realizing these socio-economic and environmental benefits will require policy support, finance and business innovation to facilitate the use of wood in design and construction. The NGP platform can play an important role in raising the profile of wood, forging partnerships and, of course, growing the trees needed to build a resilient, sustainable world.
© 2026 New Generation Plantations
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