Australia’s forest and wood products industry already has a carbon footprint 90 times smaller than mining, and can reach net zero by 2029, before becoming carbon-negative if the country fully utilises its forest resource. That is according to Building a Low-Carbon Future for Australia, a new FWPA report conducted by Wood Beca, which delivers the first full-chain emissions baseline for the national forest economy alongside three distinct decarbonisation pathways out to 2050.
The modelling ran three scenarios side by side. Under the Baseline pathway, emissions drift down with market conditions alone, whilst the middle Beyond Net Zero pathway layers biomass substitution for factory heat and a cleaner electricity grid on top to cross net zero by 2035.
However, under the most ambitious pathway, timber use would scale up across homes, offices and factories, crossing net zero as early as 2029 and pulling 3 million tonnes of carbon out of the atmosphere every year by 2050.
As it stands, construction accounts for the largest share of the 3.8 million tonne annual swing, with more timber in homes accounting for 29 per cent of the modelled 2050 reduction, and more timber in offices and factories accounting for a further 21 per cent. Grid decarbonisation contributes 16 per cent, biomass replacing fossil fuels in forest products facilities 14 per cent, increased paper recycling 11 per cent, and cleaner heavy vehicles the remaining 9 per cent.
The report’s 2050 targets call for more than a third of all new Australian houses and townhouses to be built to timber-maximised designs, alongside more than 10 per cent of all new apartments, offices and factories to be specified in mass timber systems such as cross-laminated timber and glue-laminated timber. The pathway also assumes new engineered wood technologies scale up to the point where low-grade logs can be turned into structural building products.
The report found that a traditional single-storey Australian home built with concrete and steel emits 61 tonnes of carbon dioxide during construction, whilst a house built to a “timber-maximised design” emits just 33 tonnes — a 46 per cent gap the report uses to anchor the housing-side case. Timber buildings already standing across Australia hold around 326 million tonnes of carbon, locked in their structural beams, flooring, wall sheathing, and joinery.
The full 3.8 million tonne annual improvement modelled for 2050 matches the yearly electricity consumption of around 830,000 Australian households.
The report describes the forest and wood products industry as a potential “carbon removal powerhouse” if four supporting conditions hold: direct incentives for biomass adoption, research funding for advanced engineered wood technology, transition support for low-emission heavy vehicles, and regulatory reform so timber-maximised building systems are no longer treated as exceptions. Three of the Federal Government’s recent Net Zero Sectoral Plans have already named forestry as a contributor to Australia’s 2030 and 2050 emissions targets.
Australian Forest Products Association Chief Executive Diana Hallam said forestry “can be the first to achieve net zero” of any Australian manufacturing sector, pointing to existing carbon stocks as a head start no other sector can match. Without forestry, the report concludes, Australia has no other major industry currently modelled to remove more carbon from the atmosphere than it emits.
For more information: The Wood Beca Building a Low-Carbon Future for Australia report is available here from Forest & Wood Products Australia.
