Sidebar: The Urgency of Embodied Carbon and What You Can Do about It
Carbon and FSC
Wood products certified to the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) standard have far better environmental credentials than wood products without certification, for a variety of reasons (see Certified Wood: How SFI Compares to FSC). FSC standards require a high level of ecosystem protection and help ensure social equity. And FSC upholds its standards by stripping companies of certification if they don’t follow the rules.
But can FSC wood claim a lower carbon footprint as well? Several signatories to a letter released by the Sierra Club earlier this year say it can.
The letter claims that the carbon benefits of mass timber are exaggerated because they do not account for the detrimental effects of business-as-usual forest management practices. It goes on to recommend protection of old-growth forests, increasing the time between harvests, less-intensive management, treatment of forests as ecosystems rather than plantations, and afforestation (creating forests where there were none) of existing land.
“CLT cannot be climate smart unless it comes from climate-smart forestry,” the letter concludes. “While a perfect mechanism to identify such products does not yet exist, FSC certification of privately owned forestlands can support progress in the right direction.”
New research from scientists at the nonprofit Ecotrust suggests their claims may have some validity, at least when it comes to Douglas fir in the Pacific Northwest. Researchers compared products from business-as-usual forests to those from FSC-certified forests and found a significant carbon benefit—a difference of one to two tons of CO2 per thousand board feet. They attributed this benefit to increased stream protection and the fact that FSC-certified operations must leave more wood standing in the forest. “There is nothing particularly surprising about that,” said David Diaz, one of the researchers, because “when you leave more trees, there is more carbon standing.”
Diaz said the study did not look specifically at Sustainable Forestry Initiative-certified wood, but he added that SFI standards do not require “change above and beyond” what’s considered legal in Washington and Oregon when it comes to stream protection and green wood requirements. “We would expect business-as-usual to be equivalent” to SFI, he said.
Because the study was specific to the Pacific Northwest, Diaz cautioned against drawing conclusions about carbon tonnage per board foot in other regions and for other tree species. Overall, though, “Leaving more trees makes pretty straightforward carbon sense,” he said.
