What is the zero carbon timber housing solution for Wales?
This document proposes a range of timber build solutions. Results are based on the analysis of an appropriate and future proofed definition for ‘zero carbon’, followed by design and calculation to develop an understanding of the quantifiable factors of embodied and operational carbon. Using a fabric first approach, an examination of existing and alternative timber construction methods, materials and systems offers a range of developed timber solutions that are capable of meeting the target fabric specification. These include information on whole carbon emission and offsetting calculations for a range of key typologies demonstrating the routes to Zero.
The detailed report presents findings from the Home-Grown Homes Project including actions for further detailed design, training and skills, technical development and testing, design and modelling tools. These may be relevant for designers, manufacturers, specifiers and clients.
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Whole Life Carbon
Carbon Storage Contract
The future building stock is the most effective and most immediate opportunity for carbon reduction and long-term carbon storage. By creating a new economic model for monetising the carbon reduction and storage capacity of the future building stock, the use and specification of low-carbon and carbon-storing materials could be incentivised.
Woodknowledge Wales have been working with providers of a voluntary carbon marketplace that pairs business buyers with building projects that demonstrate meaningful carbon reduction and carbon storage (30+ years). To demonstrate the viability and potential economic incentive, we have developed this exemplar carbon storage contract based on a recent social housing development in Llanbedr, Wales.
The goals are:
- To change the financial equitation for developers, architects, engineers, and builders to use more low-carbon and carbon storing building materials.
- To enable businesses to achieve their carbon reduction goals by purchasing reliable, verifiable, and asset-backed carbon reduction and storage contracts (CRSCs).
The building industry has adopted EN 15978 as the platinum standard for quantifying CO2 avoidance and CO2 storage which allows this mechanism to work internationally.
For further information, please get in touch: info@woodknowledge.wales.
Capturing Carbon: Investing in Woodlands—An Options Analysis for Welsh Housing Associations
New woodland creation is one of the most cost-effective ways of reducing carbon emissions and offsetting our nation’s carbon footprint. The combination of an undersupply of our own timber in Wales and the ambitions of Wales and the Welsh Government to create new woodlands means that an organisation interested in creating new woodlands can play a pivoting role in combating climate change.
Woodlands have proven an attractive alternative asset for long-term investors, as they provide the opportunity to benefit from the value of a naturally growing commodity and the security of ownership of the underlying land. Woodlands have multiple benefits and these can be reaped in a way that makes a financial return for the investors.
A very new and interesting market is the trading of carbon. The sale of carbon credits allows landowners who create new woodlands to increase their financial returns by selling both timber and non-timber products. Government forecasts suggest these values could rise five-fold over a 40-year period which will have a significant impact on the profitability of a woodland creation project.
This document explores three investment options for Housing Associations
- Creating woodland by acquiring land.
- Creating new woodland through novel collaboration with the public sector e.g. NRW, Local Authorities etc.
- Acquiring existing woodland.
Mandatory quality standards for new homes – WKW response
Woodknowledge Wales have responded to a Welsh Government consultation on “Mandatory quality standards for new homes” which closed on 31 October 2020.
Key targets Woodknowledge Wales propose are need are:
- A target for upfront carbon from April 2023. We propose 300kgCO2e/m2.
- A target for embodied carbon from April 2023. We propose 400kgCO2e/m2.
- A space heating demand target by April 2023. We propose 15 kWh/m2/yr.
- A total energy use intensity target by April 2023. We propose 35 kWh/m2/yr.
Read our full response here.
Net-Zero targets for Wales
Building on the work of the UKGBC and LETI, the Home-Grown Homes Project have developed a graphical net-zero guide with a set of targets & principles that we believe are achievable within a Welsh context. The guide is aimed at helping developers, designers and manufacturers achieve net-zero whole life carbon. This means tackling upfront carbon, energy demand, use of renewables and embodied carbon in order to reduce the overall emissions associated with any proposed development.
Download in pdf
Later this year we will publish a set of additional supporting guides that run alongside this graphic, describing, for example how to measure and reduce embodied carbon, a zero-carbon design guide using typical Welsh timber frame systems, and a guide to support building performance evaluation to address the energy performance gap.
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Comisiynwyd Woodknowledge Wales gan Lywodraeth Cymru I baratoi strategaeth ar gyfer integreiddio cadwyn gyflenwi diwydiannau coedwig Cymru ag adeiladu â phren oddi ar y safle. Mae’r ddogfen hon yn darparu cynllun gweithredu strategol ar gyfer trawsnewid y defnydd o bren adeiladu a dyfir gartref ar gyfer adeiladu tai a helpu i gyflawni dyheadau Deddf Llesiant Cenedlaethau’r Dyfodol.
Darllenwch yr adroddiad llawn yma.
Zero Carbon Homes
Welsh Government commissioned Woodknowledge Wales to prepare a strategy for the integration of the Welsh forest industries supply chain with offsite timber construction. This document provides an action plan to transform the use of home-grown timber in house building and help deliver the aspirations of the Well-being of Future Generations Act.
Read the report here.
Professor Callum Hill’s update on the positive environmental impact of wood 2016
In a review of the environmental impact of wood products, leading Welsh wood scientist, Callum Hill shows that timber products lock-up more carbon than is used in their production. The study also shows that generic embodied carbon data quoted from independent databases such as the Inventory of Carbon and Energy (ICE) tend to underestimate the benefit of wood.
