Woodknowledge Wales

Woodknowledge Wales

Inspiring innovation through collaboration

Social Housing

Why invest in woodfibre insulation manufacturing in Wales | Policy Briefing

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A healthy, high performance and low carbon built environment is an essential element of the Welsh Government’s ambitious decarbonisation strategy. Welsh Government policy aims to ensure that low carbon homes are increasingly delivered by local companies using sustainable Welsh supply chains. The Welsh Government regards woodfibre insulation as a key material to decarbonise existing as well as new homes. 

Woodfibre insulation has reached a level of market acceptance in the UK construction sector that justifies the establishment of a Wales based production centre. The Welsh Government believes that the high cost of transport from the continent is now critically hindering market growth for woodfibre insulation products in the UK market. Locating the UK’s first woodfibre insulation manufacturing facility in Wales benefits from the following key advantages: 

— The development of the forest industries sector in Wales is a strategic priority and part of the Welsh Government’s plans to re-focus the Welsh economy upon the sustainable use of the country’s natural resources. 

— The Welsh Government is implementing a range of ambitious policy interventions at both the industrial and the community levels to increase economic resilience and to support ambitious decarbonisation plans for Wales. 

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Reflections Post COP26

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By Gary Newman

Was COP26 a big success or a missed opportunity? Viewed positively, the conference represented a significant ‘shifting of the dial’ with new pledges and targets. On the other hand, it was not the transformative moment that many had hoped for. In reality, we will only be able to judge the significance of COP26 with the passage of time. Today, the increasing consensus about what needs to be done to limit climate change is finally shifting the focus onto delivering the actions in reality.
In Wales, we have increasingly ambitious policies and accompanying funding for two key climate change mitigation solutions – the expansion of tree planting and the creation of low carbon housing from timber.

Making investment promises count

In terms of housing, Welsh Government are investing £250m a year for the next 5 years to deliver their target of 20,000 new low carbon homes. A further £150m is being made available  to improve energy efficiency and reduce carbon emissions by retrofitting existing homes. Furthermore, new standards for social housing introduced in October this year are encouraging low embodied carbon, the use of timber and proof of housing performance through measurement of outcomes. Our ongoing WoodBUILD 2021 programme is all about exploring how these new standards can be understood and implemented in a way that supports Welsh forestry and timber construction sectors.
In terms of tree planting, Welsh Government have a highly ambitious target of an additional 43,000 ha by 2030 and 180,000 by 2050. This would increase our forest cover from the current 15% of our land area to 24%. Financial support for new tree planting has increased from £1m in 2019/2020 per year to £5.5 million in 2021/22. Whilst certainly not enough to achieve our targets this is a definite statement of intent.
These promising policies are reinforced by a further 39 recommended actions emanating from the Trees and Timber Task Force led by Deputy Climate Change minister, Lee Waters MS. The development of a timber industrial strategy, which is hoped to be a significant turning point for the Welsh forest industries sector, features among these recommendations.

Turning good intentions into purposeful action?

More money and new policies and targets for tree planting, timber manufacturing and housing will undoubtedly help to create the conditions necessary for progress, but they do not in themselves ensure that change will actually happen and with appropriate haste. We all know reality is way more complex than that. There is no precedent or blueprint for the scale of the change that is needed.
Becoming a forest nation will require the participation and collaboration across all sectors from farming to housing and everything in between. This is what we’re striving to develop within the Woodknowledge Wales membership network, through our Communities of Practice and by enabling further knowledge transfer and shared learning through case studies, events and guidance documents that are freely available on our website. We firmly believe that collaborative approaches are essential to enable and accelerate change and we are very grateful for the active participation of our members.  But creating and maintaining such a coalition for change is not a simple task. The building of trust takes time, is hard won and easily lost. As with COP26 on a global scale, so with the participants in the forest nation agenda on a Welsh scale – to achieve a better outcome for all we have to understand the benefits as well as the nature of the compromise we are asking for.
With this in mind , we are increasingly focused not so much on the what and why but on the who and how within our work programmes. Who needs to be involved and how can good intentions be turned into purposeful action across all the relevant sectors of farming, forestry, wood processing, timber manufacturing and construction?

Overcoming social and economic land-use divides

Increasing the supply of timber means saplings not only have to be grown and planted, but also managed to ensure they survive and thrive. This means farmers, as custodians of 80% of Welsh land, also have to become informed foresters. In many ways the land-use debate of farming v. forestry has become an artificial divide which was maintained and exaggerated by the Common Agriculture Policy – which should perhaps have always been a common land-use policy encompassing both farming and forestry. Growing crops, managing cattle and sheep or managing woodland all require different knowledge, skills and equipment but are well within the capability of the Welsh farming and rural communities.
If we are to dramatically increase our forest cover in line with targets and provide timber for industry, then we certainly need to do this in a way that is embraced by our communities. That means trees grown by Welsh farmers and in a way that supports rural employment in forest management and wood processing. There is much work to be done to inspire farmers to grow trees and to make it economically viable for them to do so. We have recently produced a series of briefing notes on the economics of growing trees for timber that are designed to support farmers and their advisors in their decision making. We will run a webinar for the farming community on this topic in early 2022.
In the housing sector we continue to work with our members on new build and retrofit housing projects to reduce embodied carbon, increase building performance, and to advance the appropriate use of timber components and offsite timber solutions from the Welsh supply chain.
So, regardless of the global politics played out at COP26, our focus remains upon how we can better support our growing and committed membership to get good things done. For us, this means planting more trees, processing more wood into high-value timber products and creating more low carbon homes from timber. That way we can be confident that we are reducing Welsh carbon emissions whilst at the same time building a more vibrant and resilient forest economy for the benefit of current and future generations.

Learning to build better homes

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Since the formal end of the Home-Grown Homes Project in March we’ve been applying the learning from it with social landlords. We’re moving from research into implementation – inviting social landlords to identify projects we could support them on. We have also formed a community of practice for our member development teams which has so far focussed on the key challenges in creating net zero carbon housing solutions. Our WoodBUILD events programme has been focussed on supporting social landlords and their partners to meet the new Welsh Development Quality Requirements 2021. The events have mostly been held virtually and have brought together experts in the field to contribute their thinking on action each organisation can take to respond.

The 2021 WDQR – Creating Beautiful Homes and Spaces

For readers unfamiliar with the new housing standards social landlords have to meet, they represent a significant change of approach for Welsh Government, which both funds and regulates them. It’s been a long-awaited review and its outcome is ambitious. They set minimum standards but encourage something better. And it’s not just about the homes but the spaces created around them.

WoodBUILD

The Launch Event kicked off with a welcome from Shayne Hembrow of Wales & West who with Welsh Government are WoodBUILD sponsors. It brought together Deputy Climate Change Minister Lee Waters, Campbell Lammie, one of the new standard architects and Pobl’s Neil Barber.

Exciting people about trees

100 virtual delegates heard Lee express his admiration for Woodknowledge Wales’ contribution to the ‘deep dive’ into tree planting. Society’s view on trees, wood, timber and forests he described is atrophied and not mature. ‘We need to excite people about trees and what they can do for us’. He talked of an alliance for change to get things done on tree planting where we needed to plant 86 million trees in 9 years, the enormity of which he thinks we haven’t yet grasped and which wasn’t helped by the ‘alien’ perception farmers have of tree planting. He wants to build a wood economy at the heart of which is creating 20,000 homes using MMC and timber solutions. He also sees an industry needing to adapt and to ask what the best use of trees is – garden fences or homes that displace carbon? As far as he is concerned, we need to plant more trees and make better use of the ones we do plant, to maximise the economic value – a genuinely exciting and huge challenge which he promised to drive forward with the deep dive group.

Raising the bar for new developments

Campbell Lammie gave a quick summary of the WDQR 2021, the first change in standards since the launch of the Development Quality Requirements in 2005. He described them as ‘raising the bar’ in a non-prescriptive way which, he hoped would produce better designs and a dialogue with the sector, given the need to respond to the climate emergency, move away from fossil fuels, favour a fabric first approach and encourage the use of timber. Campbell outlined the opportunities for using timber, an approach which he felt was made more likely by the consideration of upfront embodied carbon assessment likely in his view to be something which would become mandatory in the future with Net Zero Carbon taking more of a ‘front seat’. He was aware of the ambition in England to introduce whole life carbon assessment and ‘Part Z’. The target for projects to reach EPC A, with a fabric focus and an end to the use of fossil fuels could Campbell acknowledged be at odds with the ambition to lower carbon and this is where alternative approaches like Passivhaus came into play. Space standards were being mandated for the first time, gigabit broadband and attaining Secured by Design Gold standard were also features which would be included in a review in 2023.

Dealing with increasing complexity

Neil Barber, in responding identified several positives including clarity of policy, significant funding and alignment of funding streams, ambition in scale and requirements on quality, space and sustainability.  He identified the role of social landlords: creating timber system coherence, confidence, certainty and demand for the supply chain, sharing endeavour and moving beyond pilots. He described opportunities in standardisation, designing for manufacturing and assembly (off site), apprenticeships and training, investing in local economies and communities and recognition of timber as a low carbon material along with sustainably managed forests as a carbon store. He acknowledged the need for urgency in saying ‘we’ve kicked the can down the road for too long’. The delivery challenges included increasing complexity in the development process, lack of resources across many areas, rapid change, material price hikes and delivery delays.
Delegates posed questions on extending the standards to all homes, the availability of passivhaus type metrics, the skills challenge and tree planting performance. This is only the start of an ongoing dialogue. If you would like to be part of this conversation, please get in touch with david.hedges@woodknowledgewales.co.uk.

Creating net zero carbon homes and communities in Wales

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The Home-Grown Homes Project moves into a new phase. Our research findings on how we can use more of the timber we produce to deliver net zero carbon homes for social housing are all available in hands-on guidance, specification tools and reports. Now is the time to start delivering future homes that meet net zero carbon requirements and help create hundreds of new jobs and apprenticeships in Wales. We are looking for partner organisations across the supply chain seeking to further develop and deliver net zero whole life carbon solutions. We are offering support in the transition to a socially just zero carbon society with forests and woodlands at its heart.

New standards for new and existing homes

Welsh Government’s standards for new homes and existing homes will include a focus on carbon reduction. Knowing how to measure carbon and more importantly, how to reduce it will become essential for housing professionals in development and asset management teams alike. To support local authorities and housing associations in delivering zero carbon solutions, we are offering a number of options for collaboration. Our work is guided by the five principles set out in the Net Zero Whole Life Carbon Homes framework.

The route to net zero housing

A first workshop with development professionals in local authorities and housing associations in April considered the changes Welsh Government will introduce to our new and existing homes standards.
The route to zero carbon will be ‘accelerated’ over the life of the next Senedd term. All new housing will need to meet net zero carbon requirements in order to secure grant funding from Welsh Government. This means that we all have to understand and learn how to measure, analyse and ultimately reduce the embodied carbon in our homes.
Achieving net zero whole life carbon requires minimising carbon and energy demand, using only renewable energy, minimising the performance gap and offsetting ‘the last mile’ by investing into woodland creation and management.

Priorities for action

During the workshop development professionals from housing associations and local authorities shared their priorities within the zero carbon agenda. These include agreeing definitions, assessing viability particularly for low occupancy homes, improving procurement, carbon literacy training, getting buy-in from the supply chain, making the case for zero carbon, maximising the potential of MMC, helping with the retrofit challenge and creating opportunities to share learning and experience.

What type of support?

Facilitating knowledge exchange, providing information and connecting the supply chain are main areas where housing professionals are seeking support from Woodknowledge Wales. Our ambition is to help social landlords grow their own carbon capability and capacity in achieving net zero carbon. We plan on creating a community of practice so our collective knowledge and experience can be openly shared and discussed.
From May 2021, our team will be strengthened by Diana Waldron. Fresh from her role at Cardiff Met University, she will join the team to offer support in tackling building performance evaluation and embodied carbon.

Delivering future homes

Our plan is to develop a portfolio of projects and activities where we can focus our support with local authorities and housing associations. If you have a suitable project in the pipeline for the coming 2 years, please contact David Hedges at david.hedges@woodknowledgewales.co.uk.

Workshop for asset managers

We are holding a workshop for asset managers on 6th May to discuss the potential of zero carbon and repair, maintenance and improvement with view to the revised Welsh Housing Quality Standard due later in the year. Contact David Hedges for more details and to attend.