Sustainable materials must be in Queensland Building Plan

TimberQueensland
Feb 28, 2017
2 min read

The peak state body for the timber industry has today called on the Queensland Government to ensure sustainable materials are included in the sustainable buildings policy in the Queensland Building Plan.

Timber Queensland CEO, Mick Stephens, said “All over the world there is increasing recognition that the choice of actual building material can have just as an important impact as energy efficiency measures when it comes to lowering the carbon emissions from buildings.”

“The Queensland Building Plan discussion paper places a strong emphasis on the role of energy efficiency ratings, but says nothing about the carbon impacts of the building materials used.”

“Research has shown that the choice of building material can represent up to 50% of the total greenhouse gas emissions from a new house in Brisbane over a 50-year cycle.”

“There is a significant opportunity to deliver sustainable building outcomes by promoting materials that have low embodied energy. Relative to other products such as steel, aluminium and concrete, for example, wood products have very low embodied energy, with very low fossil fuel energy inputs used in their production,” Mr Stephens said.

“Concrete’s embodied energy impacts can be more than six times higher than timber. This is because trees use the sun and photosynthesis to produce timber and remove carbon emissions from the atmosphere in the same process.”

“Switching to a greater use of timber in buildings can generate significant carbon benefits for the State.”

For example, if half of all new residential dwellings built in Queensland in any one year were ‘timber maximised’, this would equate to a saving of 600,000 tonnes of carbon emissions per year compared to other materials, or 6 million tonnes over a 10-year period.”

Timber Queensland is recommending that the Queensland Building Plan put equal weighting on embodied energy impacts when it comes to promoting more sustainable buildings into the future.

“We look forward to working with the Queensland Government on the final formulation of the Building Plan.”

The Timber Queensland submission to the Queensland Building Plan discussion paper can be found here.