Frequently asked questions

Materials

Construction

Forest

Climate Change

What is certification?
Certification is designed to allow consumers to select products made from timber from sustainably managed forests.

Timber certification is a process which results in a written statement (a certificate) attesting to the origin of wood raw material and its status and/or qualifications, often following validation by an independent third party. Certification is designed to allow participants to measure their forest management practices against standards and to demonstrate compliance with those standards. Timber certification typically includes two main components: certification of sustainability of forest management; and product certification. Certification of forest management covers forest inventory, management planning, silviculture, harvesting, road construction and other related activities, as well as the environmental, economic and social impacts of forest activities. In product certification, roundwood and processed timber products are traced through the successive phases of the supply chain. Certification of forest management thus takes place in the country of origin; product certification covers the supply chain of domestic and export markets.

Source: FAO, Hj.G. Baharuddin, Timber Certification – An Overview

What is Chain of Custody?
Chain of Custody certification provides evidence of an unbroken chain from forest to product.

What is CPET?
CPET, the Central Point of Expertise on Timber, is an organisation set up by the UK government and managed by ProForest. CPET sets government policy for recognition of certification schemes.

Which certification schemes are recognized by CPET?
CPET recognizes four schemes as proof of legality and sustainability:

FSC (Forest Stewardship Council)
PEFC (Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification)
SFI (Sustainable Forestry Initiative)
CSA (Canadian Standards Association)

CPET also recognizes MTCC (Malaysian Timber Certification Council) as evidence of legality.

Are there sufficient supplies of certified timber?
Supply of certified softwood timber exceeds demand. Supply of certified hardwood, and certified hardwood plywood, is more constrained, particularly if it is sourced from tropical forests.

In 2005 60% of all softwood imports to the UK were certified, whereas demand was only at 10%. Both demand and supply are increasing, but supply still outstrips demand.

Source: Rupert Oliver, 2005

Supplies of certified or Verified Progress hardwood timber, such as under the Timber Trade Federation’s Responsible Purchasing Policy, are available. Specialist merchants will be able to advise on which species of hardwood are available from legal and/or certified sources.

What is biomass energy? How does wood fit in?
Biomass energy, or ‘bioenergy’, is energy sourced from plants and plant-derived materials. Because it is carbon neutral – the CO₂ it releases on combustion being largely balanced by the CO₂ captured during its growth – it has the potential to reduce greenhouse gas emissions when used as a substitute for energy derived from fossil fuels. Wood is the largest biomass energy resource today, and is becoming increasingly important.

Wood is still the largest biomass energy resource today, but other sources of biomass can also be used. These include food crops, grassy and woody plants, residues from agriculture or forestry, and the organic component of municipal and industrial wastes. Even the fumes from landfills (which are methane, a natural gas) can be used as a biomass energy source.

Burning biomass releases about the same amount of carbon dioxide as burning fossil fuels. However, fossil fuels release CO₂ captured by photosynthesis millions of years ago - an essentially ‘new’ greenhouse gas. Biomass, on the other hand, is largely carbon neutral (depending how much energy was used to grow, harvest, and process the fuel) as the CO₂ it releases on combustion is balanced by the CO₂ captured during its growth.

Biomass energy is currently highly controversial, as the diversion of crops which would otherwise go into the food chain is pushing up cereal prices and exacerbating food shortages. The market for Palm Oil is in some cases leading to the felling of forests to make way for palm plantations, with a consequent erosion of ecosystems and a net increase in CO₂ emissions.

So long as the wood comes from sustainably managed forests, or from secondary uses, it has a significant role to play in biomass energy through the burning of by-products (widely practised by the industry itself), waste wood, short rotation coppice wood (like willow, often used as a co-firing fuel in power stations), and poorer quality logs that are unsuitable for other use. Wood can be burned as logs, chips, or as pellets, which are a highly stable, easily transported fuel with a high calorific value.

Why is recycling wood important?
Wood is a carbon store. It keeps CO₂ out of the atmosphere. To get the most out of this carbon store effect, the life of the wood product must be extended as long as possible, through good design and maintenance, reuse where appropriate (there is a good market for reclaimed panelling, doors and flooring), and recycling (into particle board or animal bedding).

Waste wood should never by sent to landfill, where it will rot and give off methane, a powerful greenhouse gas; it should be burned as a biomass fuel providing energy as a substitute for fossil fuel.

What is carbon labelling?
Carbon labelling is increasingly being used to demonstrate the energy, and therefore carbon emissions, used in the production of a product, including the production of the raw material, processing and packaging. One of the first categories to use carbon labelling has been the food industry. Its adoption within the construction industry will serve to highlight the considerable carbon benefits to be gained by using wood products.

What is Life Cycle Assessment?
An internationally established approach for analysing the environmental impacts of products and processes by describing and assessing the energy and materials used and released to the environment over the life cycle of the product.

The term life cycle analysis is also sometimes used to describe the same process.

What are Environmental Profiles?
The Environmental Profiles Methodology is a standardised method used by BRE (the Building Research Establishment) to identify and assess the environmental effects associated with building materials over their life cycle - their extraction, processing, use and maintenance, and eventual disposal.

It establishes a set of common rules and guidelines for applying Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) to UK construction products, to produce Environmental Profiles. Environmental Profiles information is used in the Green Guide to Specification.

What is the Green Guide?
The Green Guide to Specification, produced by BRE, provides guidance for specifiers, designers and their clients on the relative environmental impacts of over 250 elemental specifications for roofs, walls, floors etc.

Environmental ratings of these specifications are based on Life Cycle Assessment using the Environmental Profiles methodology. Ratings are expressed as A*, A, B or C and form the basis of the materials section of the Code for Sustainable Homes.

The revised Green Guide is about to be published.

What is the Code for Sustainable Homes?
The Code for Sustainable Homes was published by the government in December 2006, effectively replacing BRE’s EcoHomes scheme. All new housing, as of May 1st 2008 requires a rating (even if the rating is ‘nil’). All housing built on government or government agency land must attain a 3 star rating as a minimum.

The Code has six levels of sustainability, with the most demanding, 6 star, level representing the zero carbon home that the government has signalled will be required by the building regulations in 2016. All star ratings are calculated on a ‘points out of 100’ basis across nine categories. Ratings for materials are derived from the new Green Guide. Certified timber contributes towards star ratings.

A Code for Sustainable Buildings is under development and will replace BREEAM.

What is a ‘zero carbon home’?
The definition of a ‘Zero Carbon Home’ appears to be one which is both thermally efficient (at least 100% better than the minimum laid down in Part L 2006) and which generates all its own energy requirements locally (e.g. using solar roof panels).

Source: TRADA

What is Whole Life Costing?
WLC (Whole Life Costing) measures the cost of a product or element over its life, taking into account:

Initial cost
Quantities of materials used
The service life the materials could or will be used for
The maintenance and operational cost of using the products
The end of life proportions to recycling (and sale value) and disposal.

What is thermal mass?
The material within a building, such as concrete or brick, that absorbs and holds heat.

Buildings with high thermal mass take a long time to heat up and cool down. This can be good, when the days are hot and the nights are cold, where there is a levelling-out effect; or bad if the nights are hot (as is often the case in a heatwave), when the structure of the building keeps pumping out the heat it has gained during the day. High thermal mass can also be less practical for working residents who want their homes to heat up or cool down quickly on demand.

The orientation of a building, solar control, effective ventilation, and thermally efficient lightweight structures, like timber frame, combined with elements containing thermal mass, will all contribute to the most cost-effective, comfortable and sustainable solution.

Is deforestation happening?
Yes. But not in Europe.

The world has just under 4 billion hectares of forest, covering about 30 percent of the world’s land area. Deforestation continues at an alarming rate of about 13 million hectares a year, mainly from the tropical forests of Africa, Latin America and South East Asia.

From 2000 to 2005, the net rate of loss declined slightly – a positive development. In the same period, 57 countries reported an increase in forest area, and 83 reported a decrease (including 36 with a decrease greater than 1 percent per year). However, the net forest loss remains 7.3 million hectares per year or 20 000 ha per day.

In Europe the forest area is increasing by 661,000 hectares per year.

Net increases in the extent of forest, in forest plantations and in growing stock are positive trends towards sustainable forest management in the region. All indications are that European countries have successfully stabilized or increased their forest areas, in many cases from the nineteenth or early twentieth centuries.

Source: FAO, State of the World’s Forests, 2007

Is deforestation caused by the European construction industry?
No. Over 97% of the softwood used in the UK and Europe comes from European countries with strong forest governance and stable forest estates. Similarly only 16% of the hardwood timber used in the UK and Europe comes from outside Europe.

Source: IIED and ECCM, Using Wood to Mitigate Climate Change, 2004

Why does deforestation happen?
The most important direct causes of deforestation include logging, the conversion of forested lands for agriculture and cattle-raising, urbanization, mining and oil exploitation, acid rain and fire. According to the FAO, 90 per cent of deforestation is caused by unsustainable agricultural practices, while logging and plantation forestry play a greater role in forest degradation.

The underlying causes are multiple and interrelated. In some cases they are related to major international economic phenomena, such as macro-economic strategies which provide a strong incentive for short-term profit-making instead of long-term sustainability. Also important are deep-rooted social structures, which result in inequalities in land tenure, discrimination against indigenous peoples, subsistence farmers and poor people in general. In other cases they include political factors such as the lack of participatory democracy, the influence of the military and the exploitation of rural areas by urban elites. Overconsumption by consumers in high-income countries constitutes another of the major underlying causes of deforestation, while in some regions uncontrolled industrialization is at the heart of forest degradation with widespread pollution resulting in acid rain.

Source: World Forest Movement, Causes of Deforestation, 2007

What are Sustainably Managed Forests?
Forests which are managed with respect for the planet, people and prosperity.

This covers the choice and mix of species, thinning to encourage good growth, harvesting at maturity, assuring afforestation and reforestation (natural regrowth and planting) more than balance harvesting, as well as respecting the ecosystems on which local flora and fauna depend, and the way of life of people who depend upon the forest.

What is being done to eliminate illegal logging?
The UK government has put measures in place to ensure government and government agency developments use certified timber or timber from FLEGT (Forest Law Enforcement, Governance and Trade) countries. The government is also funding programmes to help reform forest policies and laws in developing countries.

The Timber Trade Federation is working to eliminate illegal timber from the UK trade, through its Code of Conduct and Responsible Purchasing Policy.

Specialist timber companies are working with forest owners to develop sources of legal timber and to encourage progress towards sustainably through Verified Progress certification.

The UK government, through the DFID (the Department for International Development) is funding a number of programmes to help countries like Indonesia, Cameroon and Ghana reform their forestry policies and laws, improve the way their forests are managed and the benefits shared with the local community.

FLEGT, the EU’s Action Plan on Forest Law Enforcement, Governance and Trade has drawn up voluntary partnership agreements with timber-exporting producer countries, including Indonesia, Malaysia, Cameroon and Ghana, and several other countries are in negotiations with the EU. These agreements have led to a licensing system providing safe passage to legal timber. Any timber which arrives at the EU border without the relevant stamp of approval will be turned away.

The public sector accounts for around 20% of the timber used in the UK. The UK government introduced a public procurement policy in 2000 which made it mandatory for timber to be certified legal. The Code for Sustainable Homes requires certified sustainable timber in all housing built on government or government agency land.

Is it bad to use tropical hardwood?
Yes, if there is no credible evidence that it has been legally logged.

No, if it is certified or Verified Progress.

‘A forest that pays is a forest that stays’ – a good market for legally produced tropical timber is a good incentive to maintain good management processes.

It is the conversion to agricultural land due to the non-competitive nature of commercial forestry which is the most frequent factor associated with forest loss.

Source: Angelsen and Kaimowitz, Rethinking the Causes of Deforestation, 2001

What is Verified Progress?
Independently audited assurance that timber is legally harvested and from forests where forest management practices are actively improving towards achieving certification. Sometimes called Verified Legal.

Verified Progress timber is available through a number of members of the Timber Trade Federation through the RPP (Responsible Purchasing Policy) and through specialist companies where assurance of adequate progress in working towards FSC certification is achieved through certification support programmes which are operated by WWF, Tropical Forest Trust and SGS's Certification Support Program.

What is the Stern Review?
A report on the Economics of Climate Change by Sir Nicholas Stern, Head of the Government Economic Service and Adviser to the Government on the economics of climate change and development, published in October 2006.

It concludes that:

The scientific evidence is now overwhelming that climate change is a serious global threat, and it demands an urgent global response
There is still time to avoid the worst impacts of climate change, if we take strong action now
The benefits of strong and early action far outweigh the economic costs of not acting
If we don’t act, the overall costs and risks of climate change will be equivalent to losing at least 5% of global GDP each year, now and forever. If a wider range of risks and impacts is taken into account, the estimates of damage could rise to 20% of GDP or more
In contrast, the costs of action – reducing greenhouse gas emissions to avoid the worst impacts of climate change – can be limited to around 1% of global GDP each year.

What’s causing climate change?
Mainly carbon dioxide from industrial processes, energy production, and deforestation.

In 1780 the level of carbon dioxide (CO₂) in the atmosphere stood at 280 parts per million (ppm). Production of CO₂ has increased significantly since the industrial revolution and continues to increase, as it is closely related to the growth in energy consumption and changes in the use of land resulting from an increasingly mechanized, affluent and growing population. In 2006 it stood at 382pmm – an increase of 36%. Between 1970 and 2004 annual emissions grew by about 80%.

Source: IPCC AR4 synthesis report, summary for policymakers 2007

Carbon dioxide (CO₂) is the most important man-made greenhouse gas (GHG), although not the most potent, accounting for over 75% of total GHG emissions. The remainder consists of methane (14.3%), nitrous oxide (7.9%) and fluorinated gases (1.1%).

The Stern Report (2006) suggests 1% of global GDP will need to be spent annually to stabilize levels at 550ppm CO₂e (CO₂e includes all the other GG within the CO₂ figure; the CO₂ only figure is 450ppm), a politically acceptable target.

This level requires global emissions to peak by 2016, declining by 1-3% annually thereafter, to reach 25% below current levels by 2050. Given the expected rise in global GDP by 2050, this implies emissions per unit of GDP will need to be just one quarter of 2006 levels.

There is considerable evidence that the 550ppm target is neither ambitious enough, nor that easy to reach. Global CO₂ emissions appear to be accelerating rapidly. According to a study published in the US journal, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), in the first six years of the new millennium the annual rise in CO₂ emissions from fossil fuel burning was 2.9%, compared with just 0.7% a year in the 1990s. From 1970 to 2000 the annual rise in CO₂ concentrations in the atmosphere was about 1.5ppm, whereas the last six years have seen an average rate of over 1.9ppm as the world economy has grown, China has made heavier use of coal, and the existing natural forest, sea and soil sinks have found it harder to absorb carbon.

So the need to reduce CO₂ emissions is urgent, and every available solution needs to be adopted, particularly when the solution is as pain-free as substituting wood for other building materials and for fossil fuels.

How important is deforestation?
Globally deforestation and land use changes are the second biggest source of CO₂ emissions. But in the UK, and Europe from where our timber is sourced, the growth of our forests is reducing CO₂ emissions.

Share of different sectors in total man-made GHG emissions in 2004 in terms of CO₂-eq. (Forestry includes deforestation).

Energy supply: 25.9%
Industry: 19.4%
Forestry: 17.4%
Agriculture: 13.5%
Transport: 13.1%
Residential and commercial buildings: 7.9%
Waste & waste water: 2.8%

Source: IPCC AR4 synthesis report, summary for policymakers 2007

In the UK energy supply is the largest source, followed by road transport.

Sources of UK CO₂ emissions, 2005
Energy supply: 37.5%
Road transport: 21.6%
Other industry: 17.7%
Residential: 15.0%
Other: 8.3%

Source: DEFRA

Deforestation is not a factor in the production of CO₂ emissions in the UK, Europe, North America and many other predominantly northern hemisphere countries where the forests are stable or growing. In fact these forests play an important role in reducing CO₂ concentrations as they are natural carbon sinks.

How important are Europe’s forests as a carbon sink?
While carbon stocks in forest biomass decreased by about 5.5 percent at the global level from 1990 to 2005, carbon stocks are increasing in Europe and North America.

Europe (including Eastern European countries and the Russian Federation) contains 27% of the total global forest area and Europe’s forests store over 40 Gtonnes of carbon – a carbon sink of 150 Gtonnes of CO₂.

Source: FAO, Global Forest Resources Assessment, 2005

A gigatonne = one billion tonnes.

What is the difference between a carbon sink and a carbon store?
A carbon sink is active: a mechanism that actively absorbs CO₂ (like forests, oceans or the soil).

A carbon store is passive: an object that stores CO₂ as carbon (like wood).

Why is it important to store carbon? How/where is carbon stored?
Increasing concentrations of CO₂ in the atmosphere are the main cause of climate change. Stored carbon is CO₂ that would otherwise be released into the atmosphere, increasing concentrations of CO₂ and accelerating climate change.

Carbon is stored in a tree by a process of photosynthesis. On average, trees absorb 1 tonne of CO₂ for every cubic metre’s growth, producing 727 kgs of oxygen.

Source: ECCM

Much of the carbon stored in the tree continues to be stored in the wood products made from the harvested tree, and beyond, through reuse, recycling and biomass energy recovery.

What is the difference between carbon and carbon dioxide (CO₂)?
Carbon is a chemical element with the symbol C and atomic number 6. Carbon dioxide is a chemical compound composed of two oxygen atoms and a single carbon atom. One tonne of carbon equals 3.67 tonnes of carbon dioxide.

The term ‘carbon’ is often used as shorthand for carbon dioxide (CO₂), as in ‘carbon footprint’. It is also used as a shorthand for Greenhouse Gases (GHG), which include:

carbon dioxide
methane
nitrous oxide
hydrofluorocarbons
perfluorocarbons
sulphur hexafluoride

As the main GHG is carbon dioxide, scientists talk about these gases in terms of tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO₂eq), or CO₂e.