JUNE 2025CONSTRUCTIONTECHREVIEW.COM8IN MY OPINIONMASS TIMBER A SUSTAINABLE APPROACH TO MODERN CONSTRUCTIONBy Pete Kobelt, Director, Mass Timber Solutions, STO Building GroupThe Role of Mass Timber in Sustainable ConstructionI imported the first commercial and residential mass timber projects to the U.S. in 2010 and have since helped start four mass timber factories, delivered numerous major projects and I am currently leading STO Building Group's North American Mass Timber Business Unit in support of all fourteen companies in STO's family of builders.The production of concrete and steel requires massive amounts of energy, hence the name "High Embodied Energy" materials, which release significant volumes of carbon into the atmosphere. Combined just those two building materials account for ­ 15 percent of global carbon emissions. Trees, conversely, act as carbon consumers, removing it from the atmosphere and also sequestering it in its wood fiber. Mindful and sustainable management of our working forests provides renewable, carbon neutral or negative building materials, protects the forests from development while delivering healthy, high performance buildings that can be designed to use less energy, faster and with significantly less waste than conventional buildings.In addition, wood residuals like sawdust, chips and bark from primary and secondary processing are always utilized in secondary value added products like wood pellets and on MDF products while the very lowest value residuals can be burned to create low carbon energy.Challenges facing the timber industry include a dramatic shift from procuring timber from federally managed National Forests to State & private timberland owners. Today there are 50mm acres of dead standing Mountain Pine Beetle kill in the Rocky Mountain west, including Canada. Lack of forest management driven largely by a lack of understanding of what that term really means has left millions vast swaths of timber congested, infested and at great risk for widespread catastrophic fires ­ these fires are "carbon bombs" releasing decades of stored carbon back into the atmosphere in potently concentrated form.Various sustainable timber sourcing certifications like FSC, SFI & PEFC are helping educate the market on best practices in forestry and helping owners craft and narrate the critical role forestry plays in the mass timber story. As the notion of a circular economy becomes mainstream, we are constantly studying how to design, engineer, manufacture and build mass timber structures that are not only designed for manufacturing and assembly but designed for deconstruction and repurposing as well. Not an easy task but as demand from smaller, underserved markets wanting to utilize mass timber components emerges, the opportunity to refabricate the timber elements into smaller Pete Kobelt
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