Today the European Commission announced the plan to start an upward revision of the 2030 EU climate targets in order to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050. According to the communication, all sectors of the EU economy will have to step up their efforts to reduce greenhouse gases emissions by 55% by the end of the current decade.
The European Woodworking Industries play a fundamental role in the transition to a sustainable, green, and carbon-neutral Europe. As an early supporter of the EU Green Deal objectives, the Woodworking Industries stress the importance of upholding climate ambitions in synergy with the efforts sustained by the EU, Member States and companies alike to recover from the economic and social blow inflicted by the still ongoing Covid-19 pandemic.
In that context, investing in the decarbonisation of the building sector through renovation and sustainable new construction gains strategic importance. “We know that the construction sector can even be turned from a carbon source into a carbon sink if organic building materials like wood and smart technologies as Artificial Intelligence are being used”, said President Von der Leyen in her 2020 State of the Union address to the Parliament.
Integrating green materials, such as wood products, into building projects can help reducing the environmental impacts associated with the construction sector. Timber buildings are globally recognised as key allies in climate change mitigation strategies: they represent an immediate way to achieve long-term carbon storage in products – as mentioned in the 2020 Circular Economy Action Plan – and they allow to reduce the use of energy-intensive materials, which could lead to 100 Mt CO2 savings in Europe, according to a recent European Forest Institute study.
Wood applications also have a role in increasing the renovation rate of the existing building stock: as an inherent insulant, wood is the ideal material for energy-efficient construction; moreover, it requires less energy in manufacturing and transport, thereby reducing the final embodied energy in the building.
The Woodworking Industries look forward to engage in a dialogue with policy makers on the best way to capture such potential by way of already established carbon metrics and tools, and without imposing additional administrative or economic burden on the final consumer or Small and Medium Enterprises.
