The Portland-based firm PAE Consulting Engineers wanted its new headquarters to be among the world’s most environmentally friendly — a “Living Building” that stood five stories tall but tread lightly on the world around it.
So the company designed its office to last for hundreds of years, powered by renewable energy. The building recycles its water and even gathers urine to convert into fertilizer, generating more than $30,000 a year since its opening in 2022.
For the building material itself, PAE chose mass timber, wood that can be used in place of concrete and steel.
Advocates tout mass timber as more sustainable than concrete and steel because it stores the carbon trees absorb during their lifespan, trapping it as long as the building lasts.
But opponents say mass timber’s green tint is a farce. These skeptics, mostly environmentalists and academics, say the benefits of mass timber have been overstated and that any material that requires cutting down more trees necessarily comes with major environmental drawbacks.
For now, mass timber remains a niche alternative to concrete and steel. It commands a fairly low market share of timber production, too — experts say only about 2% to 3% in Oregon. But that’s expected to grow, potentially doubling in the years to come as the mass timber industry expands and advances.
So questions over mass timber’s sustainability matter equally to its advocates and its opponents, who have very different standards for what constitutes sustainable.
And it matters to taxpayers, who have contributed millions of dollars in federal and state investment toward its research and development.
Opportunity and skepticism
Mass timber describes beams, columns and panels made from compressed and layered wood, strengthening the material. The Oregon timber industry and political leadership have touted mass timber for years as an opportunity to revive the fortunes of rural communities around the state with homegrown building materials.
Oregon and the federal government have invested millions of dollars to boost the industry. And advocates have touted the potential environmental benefits of using a renewable material — timber.
Oregon stands on a graveyard of ancient trees — most of the old growth is gone.
Protecting the surviving trees and new growth from logging is more important to the environment than any emission mitigation mass timber could provide, said Beverly Law, a retired professor of environmental systems at Oregon State University.
Any increase in log demand that mass timber might cause, she said, means further loss of biodiversity.
The northern spotted owl, the bird that sparked the original “timber wars” of the 1990s, still fights for survival despite more comprehensive environmental regulation. Numerous other species are harmed by logging, too.
A growing mass timber industry could increase demand for logs. Law said that means more logging and more emissions.
“Oregon’s forests are important nationally for the amount of carbon that they store in them,” she said.
There hasn’t been sufficient analysis of the carbon emitted by mass timber production either, she said, due to the complexity of tracking sourcing, burns and other factors.
Even the reduction of carbon emissions itself comes into question, Law said.
She said mass timber’s promise of sequestering carbon doesn’t expunge the emissions from logging, nor the waste that can be produced.
Undesirable parts of trees, such as bark, are often left behind after harvest. Though the amount varies, there can be a significant amount of the tree not used in the finished product.
That waste usually will decay or burn, Law said, releasing stored carbon into the atmosphere.
John Talberth, the president of the Portland-based Center for Sustainable Economy, said that the use of unsustainable forestry practices in mass timber production doesn’t justify the industry’s growth.
Meanwhile, Talberth said, new techniques for producing concrete and steel are reducing those materials’ environmental footprint. He said that investing more to research further improvements in conventional building materials would likely be more beneficial to the climate than investment in mass timber.
A World Resource Institute land-use study did find mass timber manufacturing emits far less carbon than concrete or steel.
However, the study also says mass timber’s growth could drive an increase in logging and thereby increase carbon emissions for decades to come. And that, the study concludes, is more risky than the potential benefits mass timber might offer in the future.
‘A different world’
Proponents of mass timber say their market is too small to significantly increase demand for logs.
Logging in Oregon has changed, too, said Samuel Dicke, business development manager for Portland mass timber company Timberlab. He said the timber industry’s poor environmental track record in the 1990s doesn’t reflect current practices.
“We live in a different world,” Dicke said.
Dicke, like many others at Timberlab, moved into the mass timber industry explicitly for its benefits in sustainability. And he said Timberlab is making progress in other environmental concerns the company has: emissions from the glue used in construction and sustainable sourcing.
There’s no denying that logging emits carbon — from the energy it takes to cut down trees to transporting logs and milling them. But Dicke said the main benefit of using mass timber today is that the material captures and stores carbon, which can serve to counter those emissions.
That carbon storage and active forest management also counteract potential emissions from wildfire, said Paul Vanderford, director of green markets at the Portland-based business group Sustainable Northwest — a company that specializes in sourcing wood for construction.
Much of his work focuses on forest restoration. That’s necessary in many parts of the Pacific Northwest because of past operations that replanted trees too close together or in areas they don’t grow naturally.
One way people manage forests is known as “thinning from below,” a strategy that emulates what low-intensity, natural fires would do to forests.
“Forest management in those forms tends to leave the trees that are adapted for the site,” he said.
Vanderford said managing those forests is better than letting unmanaged forests succumb to wildfire — releasing huge amounts of carbon into the atmosphere.
Still, the issue of waste is pertinent enough that mass timber companies are trying to combat it.
Freres Engineered Wood in Linn County is one such example. In its mass plywood panels, the company strips logs and flattens the wood instead of cutting rectangularly. That process allows for increased efficiency and as a result, lower emissions.
Opponents have also challenged mass timber’s longevity, citing a lack of data.
But Dicke said Timberlab has seen even insurance companies, which he said study issues like these closer than anyone, put trust in the longevity of mass timber building.
Vanderford said that more than anything else, the relationship between logging and mass timber is not black and white.
It’s not that timber harvests have no environmental impact. But Vanderford said the question is about harm reduction — whether mass timber is the building material with the least impact. He said mass timber is worth the time and investment.
Another advantage Vanderford highlighted is the ability to choose where each project gets its timber.
That’s his business, enabling companies to choose their lumber supply with sustainability, the health of rural economies or other factors in mind.
A part of needed growth
Paul Schwer, PAE’s former president, said he chose wood from Canada over cheaper wood from Austria for this reason.
Despite the political boundary, Schwer said the wood still came from the Columbia River’s watershed.
“We think of things more from an ecosystem perspective as opposed to a geopolitical perspective,” he said.
The logs they used were also FSC-certified — a standard for sustainable forestry.
FSC uses a multibody verification process that tracks forest management plans, conservation and more, which the organization claims improves environmental outcomes.
The U.S. is far behind its peers in the number of certified forests, however. Canada has more than 120 million acres, while the U.S. has less than a third as much.
Still, Schwer said that even if the wood doesn’t come from certified forests, mass timber is still the best option from a carbon standpoint.
The company’s goal was to create a building that draws little or nothing from the electric grid and intakes more carbon than it emits. The company achieved that, Schwer said, and the building is designed to be replicable on a developer’s budget.
Mass timber is just a part of that, he said, a part the company is proud of.
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