Locally sourced timber has a far lower embodied carbon footprint than imported timber across most product categories. That is according to Timber Development UK (TDUK), which last week published its 2026 Embodied Carbon Data for Timber Products, calculating embodied carbon across the 11 most widely used timber product categories in the UK.
The standout figure is UK-sourced softwood, which dropped from 107kgCO₂e/m³ to just 38kgCO₂e/m³ — a fall of 69kgCO₂e/m³ thanks to a new EPD targeting UK C16 softwood. It is the biggest single reduction in the dataset’s history.
And whilst softwood leads the movement, the direction holds across the board.
Average embodied carbon figures for CLT, glulam, LVL, I-joists, OSB, and chipboard were all lower than the 2025 edition. Softwood, OSB, MDF and I-joists produced in the UK all recorded lower carbon figures than their imported counterparts — and for specifiers, that is now a number they can quote, not a claim they can make.
At the same time, end-of-life C1-C4 embodied carbon impacts are included for the first time in the 2026 edition, giving designers a full accounting of a product’s carbon burden from extraction through to demolition.
Wood fibre insulation is included in the dataset as the eleventh product category. TDUK also flags increased data confidence levels across the board, reflecting the growing pool of published EPDs, alongside clearer product-only stored biogenic carbon figures that had previously created ambiguity in comparative assessments.
It comes as embodied carbon accounting tightens across UK and European construction, with regulators and developers shifting from voluntary targets toward mandatory disclosure at the project approval stage. The full dataset is available for free download on the TDUK website. For any project team still quoting 2025 figures, the new UK softwood number alone is reason enough to reopen the carbon assessment.
