Building in timber is bad for the environment. Fact or fiction?

Climate change and material scarcity, combined with housing shortages acutely calls for alternative materials that curb the environmental damage of the construction industry. Bio-based materials, and in particular the latest generation of mass timber products can play an essential role and contribute to making the construction industry climate-neutral and circular.

Two experts, Pablo van der Lugt (TU Delft) and Joke Dufourmont (AMS Institute) dive into the most persisting misconceptions that hamper the large-scale adoption of mass timber construction in this AMS Institute series of articles on ‘Timber construction: facts and fiction’, using examples, data and research results.

Green Deal Timber Construction MRA

The reason for making this series is, among others, the Green Deal Wood Construction of the Metropolitan Region of Amsterdam (MRA) with 32 municipalities, the province of Noord-Holland and Flevoland and the transport region Amsterdam. During the signing of the Green Deal Wood Construction, a book was published with the title 'Wood construction myths debunked'. The book can be downloaded free of charge (in Dutch only).

More information

• Read the first article recently published by AMS Institute here (English only).
  Fact or fiction #1: Timber comes from far away and the processing and transportation causes a lot of CO2 emissions. Also, by relying on timber construction, we contribute to deforestation, while we need those forests in our fight to mitigate climate change.
• Pablo van der Lugt is Research Fellow Environmental Technology & Design; working at the Department of Urbanism, TU Delft and involved in the AMS Institute.
• Book publication: 'Houtbouwmythes ontkracht' (Dutch only).
• AMS project: 'Building in timber for a climate-neutral and circular Amsterdam'