Report Carbon Footprint of New Zealand Buildings

If half of the steel and concrete currently used in newbuilding construction in New Zealand is converted totimber, the national embodied carbon emissions willbe significantly reduced:•The reduction in emissions will be one milliontonnes of CO2-e each year.•This is 2.5% of New Zealand’s total non-agricultural CO2-e emissions.•At a price of $NZ 50 per tonne of CO2-e thevalue of this reduction will be $NZ 50 million per year.These figures are for embodied CO2-e in newbuildings. Operational emissions and end-of-lifeoptions are not included.•This new timber construction will need 1.3million m3 of logs per year, an 8% increase incurrent annual consumption, requiring 6% ofcurrent log exports to be kept in New Zealand.•Additional wood processing facilities for timber,glulam, LVL, plywood, and CLT, will need to beat least ten times the size of the new Red StagCLT factory in Rotorua.