Australia’s housing crisis—which has led to the federal and state governments’ vow to build 1.2 million new dwellings over the next five years—can propel the country towards a Net Zero future – with the built environment, itself responsible for almost 40% of emissions, providing the greatest opportunity for improvement.
That is according to a new report, Steps Towards a Greener Future: Progress Toward Net Zero, launched by Dr Alastair Woodard and supported by the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry, the Australian Frame and Trust Manufacturer’s Association (FTMA), and the Gippsland Forestry Hub.
“It is recognised that ‘more building’ means ‘more emissions’, but it is also acknowledged that reducing carbon emissions in the built environment will be fundamental in Australia reaching its net zero target,” said Dr Woodard, the CEO of Wood Products Victoria.
“The critical emission sources in the building and construction sector are burning fossil fuels for energy and using carbon-intensive materials and processes,” he said, adding that “carbon emissions released before the building is occupied (upfront carbon) are expected, without intervention, to go from 16% to 85% of the built environment’s total carbon footprint by 2050.”
According to Dr Woodard, Australia’s $9 billion-plus forest and wood products industry must play an instrumental role in addressing carbon emissions in building materials by “uniquely locking away and storing carbon for the life of the product, and can deliver high on-site productivity and low-emission offsite prefabrication system efficiencies.”
“Wood products can be used as the primary structural / construction material in many of these new dwellings to enable a reduction in GHG emission impacts. lightweight framing for detached dwellings and low-rise buildings mass timber solutions for mid-rise apartment buildings.”
According to Dr Woodard timber-based systems are the perfect mix to address the country’s housing crunch.
Dr Woodard said the dwellings we all live in are often overlooked in the drive for sustainability improvements, with the residential construction sector especially suited to provide “more climate-responsible, embodied carbon emission-reducing building practices.”
The Key Recommendations
The report has identified four themes: namely government policy, voluntary initiatives, the wood products industry, and education on the wood’s value.
It calls for the Australian government (and the state governments) to introduce a framework to measure, verify, and compare embodied carbon emissions in new building projects and major refurbishments – as well as a national database for Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) and Environmental Product Declaration (EPD) statements.
“Australia also has no accepted framework, or aggregated publicly available dataset of emissions factors, for measuring embodied carbon in the building and construction sector in an accurate, repeatable, and trusted way,” Dr Woodard said. With the new framework, “essential to allow building owners and investors to set robust and measurable targets for reducing embodied emissions in buildings.”
In addition, it calls for the National Construction Code (or the NCC) and state equivalent codes to introduce embodied carbon targets for future residential buildings: “As buildings electrify and the grid decarbonises, operational emissions will be less significant, and embodied emissions will become the greatest source of GHGs.”
“The Federal Government, and states and territories, should introduce minimum requirements for reporting and reducing embodied carbon into the NCC update in 2028, or before this if possible,” Dr Woodard said.
Then there are voluntary rating mechanisms like NABERS and Green Star, which have been widely embraced by developers in the private industry but have stalled in the public sector: “Private sector leaders have embraced voluntary rating; however, there has not been the same level of adoption in the public sector in all jurisdictions.”
“By leveraging these tools through procurement processes, governments can integrate requirements to help lower emissions in public projects and increase the market for low-emission building products and construction systems. The federal, state, and local governments and industry should commit to using trusted, robust, and credible building rating systems, including Green Star and NABERS, and incentivise their uptake on appropriate public projects.”
Additional recommendations include ensuring that all future plantations and productive forests are certified under either the PEFC (Responsible Wood) or FSC forest certification scheme, developing more prefabricated timber solutions – including ‘elemental prefabrication’ and capturing and reusing more timber waste from demolition and construction sites.
“In the residential sector, state governments and or local councils should mandate against total demolition of unwanted homes and landfilling disposal of all products,” Dr Woodard said. “Homes instead should be deconstructed, and all usable materials repurposed. In the non-residential sector, there is an increasing use of high carbon storage, large mass timber, offsite constructed systems, particularly using CLT and GLT.”
“It is not unreasonable to assume that economically, these products will have a higher value at the end of a building’s life (in 50+ years) than current purchase values, in reuse or re-manufactured applications; so, should be viewed today, as stored assets for a future fibre use opportunity.”
- For more information, click here to access the report. To learn more about the push toward “elemental prefabrication,” click here for Wood Central’s exclusive interview with Dr Woodard in August.
