Mass Timber Group Show: Sustainable Building Experts

Mass Timber Trends & Facts You Should Know w/ Peter Moonen

• Brady Potts, Nic Wilson / Peter Moonen • Episode 43

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#MassTimber expert Peter Moonen, the National Sustainability Manger for the Canadian Wood Council, unpacks where the industry sits now, trends he’s tracking, and what the future of #MassTimberConstruction looks like in North America.

We also confront the pressing challenges and vast opportunities in the mass timber market. From supply chain issues and extended lead times to misconceptions about resource depletion, Peter provides a comprehensive analysis. Learn about the critical role of fire management, proper material usage, and the contrasting forest management practices between Canada and the United States. Understand how growing more forests in response to wood demand can mitigate climate change and secure the future of mass timber.

Connect with Peter on LinkedIn

Resources from the Canadian Wood Council

Looking for your mass timber community? Attend the 2025 Mass Timber Group Summit in Denver Co - Aug 20-22nd!

Speaker 1:

And I think the future is going to be hybrid design. It's not going to be 40-story all-wood buildings with oak pins. It's going to be steel cores or concrete cores or steel brace frame cores. It's going to have steel connectors, it's going to have concrete and reinforced steel, reinforced concrete foundations. And we have to learn to say what's the best way to build this building to achieve what we need Low carbon, low cost, beauty, performance, ease of deconstruction, reusability. All those factors are coming into play.

Speaker 2:

This is the Mass Timber Group Show. I'm Nick.

Speaker 3:

And I'm Brady and we talk to mass timber experts. Today we caught up with Peter Moonen, the National Sustainability Manager with the Canadian Wood Council.

Speaker 2:

Peter drills into what's happening with mass timber trends, where the industry is at and where we're headed.

Speaker 3:

And if you like these podcasts, subscribing to the channel is the biggest compliment you can give us. So with that, let's get into it.

Speaker 1:

Hey, brady, nick, nice to see you. I'm Peter Moenen. I'm the National Sustainability Manager with the Canadian Wood Council, been with the Wood Council for 25 years or so, and we are a technical organization. We don't sell anything. We're advocates for wood, advocates for strong codes and standards that reflect the true performance capabilities of wood, and we are also educators and trainers. So we take technical stuff and try to transfer it to architects, designers, contractors, builders, manufacturers, as well as building officials, fire officials and even politicians.

Speaker 3:

Got it. And, Peter, what do you think the world most needs to know about the mass timber industry both in Canada and North America, or maybe even the world as a whole?

Speaker 1:

I think right now, people are curious what is mass timber? A lot of people do think they know. A lot of people do know, but I think what we really need to convey is it's just at the start. As we develop aspirations to reduce the carbon, increase the performance, increase the speed, use renewable materials, mass timber is going to play a role in the construction sector. It's not the solution, but it's part of a solution, and so I think that's something we're not done yet. Mass timber is surging. We're going to have hiccups, we're going to have problems, we're going to have successes. We're going to have iconic buildings, and we're going to have buildings that people need every day Schools, libraries, gymnasium. I'd love it if, in five years, the three of us don't have to talk about where mass timber is going because it's there.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, that's a great goal. I like to think of a time when mass timber is just as common in people's minds as concrete steel, two by four, stud framing, et cetera. What do you think is driving the growth of mass timber? And then, what do you think on the reverse side, are the constraints?

Speaker 1:

I think what's driving the growth of mass timber is the enthusiasm that a few architects and engineers had 25, 30 years ago in Central Europe. I know that the first sort of presence of mass timber occurred in 2008 or 2009 when Andrew Waugh from the Murray Grove building in London came over and presented in Canada and the United States and that really captured the imagination of architects Wow, what is this stuff? What do you mean? It's wood. Nine stories, Are you kidding me? So it held a lot of curiosity for people. There was a lot of mystery around it and they saw that opportunity and they said I need to learn about this stuff and I can't tell you how many sessions we've had on mass timber. It started in a very elementary way and now it's really advanced. The issues now are different that we have to deal with, but it's got a long way to go before it is completely just normalized and accepted and understood.

Speaker 3:

Hey, we're going to get back to the podcast in just a second, but first I have a question for you. Are you somebody looking to build a mass timber project? If the answer is yes, then you need to put together an experienced team.

Speaker 2:

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Speaker 3:

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Speaker 2:

That means they have the experience, network and technology to make your next mass timber project a success. Learn more about Cornerstone Timber Frames by clicking the link in the show notes below. What are some of the bigger issues? On a one to two to three year horizon and then maybe a five to 10 year horizon?

Speaker 1:

Right now and I was just chatting with a designer it's really difficult to secure supply. The North American manufacturers are screaming busy. I know the ones in Canada are very busy. There are contractors and designers who really want to use this stuff, but there isn't the local supply yet and I think that there is an amount of wood that's coming in from Europe that is still going to come in from Europe over time. I think as it becomes more normal and as you get contractors say, oh, you know, we should probably get a quote on this, or we should. The client wants to build it in Vastiver. A designer is going to say, yeah, we can do that, but they're going to need to know that they've got a supply.

Speaker 1:

And one of the problems is right now, the lead time. It's a while. You can't just call up and say I need 74 panels, these are the dimensions. It's going to be 18 months. It's hard to get in that queue for a supply chain and, as we all know, economics can change in two years. So that is something that the sector has to deal with. I know that people don't like to bring in European wood At the same time. My view is well, you can either have European wood or steel and concrete. Take your pick.

Speaker 3:

I think on that supply side there's another layer underneath that that some people have some misconceptions around, and that's not just the manufacturing capacity to put out panels and glulam, it's also like the fiber source going into the manufacturer. So how would you like address the concern that, hey, if we start building everything with mass timber, we're going to run out of trees?

Speaker 1:

Well, just to give you a sense of perspective, the global capacity for mass timber right now is creeping up to 2.8 million cubic meters per year. The volume of lumber that could produce 2.8 million cubic meters per year. The volume of lumber that could produce 2.8 million cubic meters a year could come from about 20% of one year's annual harvest in British Columbia. So let's say that again, the entire global supply of lumber to CLT could be met by one province in Canada. Secondly, if you have a growing market for a product, it is a disincentive to run out of the feedstock for that product. If someone says, oh, you mean I can grow trees, oh, and I can sell them in 20 years or 40 years or 80 years or however long you want to keep them, that's an incentive to grow more forest and to grow more wood on that forest, because you can use more wood in the construction sector. And that was the largest. I think the IPCC said that is the single biggest mitigation benefit or opportunity that we can to mitigate climate change.

Speaker 3:

From that mitigation standpoint, is it? I imagine it's twofold, so it's one it's replacing high intensity materials concrete and steel in these buildings, but then two from like a forest management standpoint, from like fire.

Speaker 1:

right, that's got to play a role too yeah, I mean uh, fire is always the uh, the the bane of the existence, for wood either burns the four in a forest. Where it can burn, you can structure, it can burn a building. It's not a perfect material, any more than steel or concrete or brick or glass or aluminum, and this is where we need to have people understand the material. They have the knowledge of what it can be exposed to and what it can't be exposed to, how to protect it from whatever it is that's going to cause problems and how to fix those problems. We work with designers a lot and we spend a fair bit of time teaching them about design for durability and longevity, because, ultimately, materials don't fail people. People fail materials by using them improperly.

Speaker 1:

And so, from a wood supply point of view, in the United States you've got mostly privately held land. People can grow that. They can say, oh, I can get good money selling this for CLT. In Canada it's a little bit different. Most of the forest is owned by the governments, provincial governments and when they say this is how much you can cut, it doesn't matter if you could use that much, you only get that much. So the annual allowable cut is determined by the government. You then have to make the best use of that wood. So I think what we'll start seeing is people directing more of this wood or milling it differently to optimize the recovery from logs to CLT, glulam and other mass timber products.

Speaker 3:

I'm curious what you're seeing in Canada, because the trends in the United States, depending on different states' policies or political leaning, the trend tends to be like every year that allowable harvest on our government-owned lands kind of keeps trending down and a lot of our mills, which then the manufacturers source from, are reducing their fiber accounts. I'm sure we're not any different, but we've had lots of mill closures in the States over the years. I mean we just had two, you know mill-based companies close in my hometown in the last month. So I mean, are you seeing the trend in Canada working its way down and how do you see that affecting, you know, the future of mass timber?

Speaker 1:

Well, there are. There were a couple of shutdowns, mill closures, here in British Columbia. That is because of fiber supply. I think there's not a really good understanding among a lot of government people that it's not as if you can spread all of the allowable harvest over the existing mills and keep them all running. There's a point at which it's not viable to operate a mill.

Speaker 1:

So I think fires do impact, at least in British Columbia, because a fire destroys standing timber which is used in determining how much timber should be harvested. So I think it's really complicated. I don't know what the circumstances are for the federal lands in the US, whether it's that the forests are damaged, whether they've been overharvested, whether they're being sought for protective measures or endangered species. I really can't comment on that. But all of those factors also play into the government's decisions in Canada as to what they're going to allow to be harvested. However, if you've got a product that is worth X and another product that you can take X and make it 2X or whatever the multiplier is, you're going to try to produce as much of the base of feedstock as you can. So, as I say, you may end up shifting your uses of products and trying to upgrade how that wood can be used.

Speaker 2:

What's your stance on carbon storage, how that wood can be used. What's your stance on carbon storage? I know there's a little bit of a misconception on how much carbon is being stored in these mass timber buildings versus even like a traditional stick frame. And some people are kind of thinking like I guess if you're in the concrete industry or the steel industry it's like, oh my gosh, everyone is screaming running around like mass timber is taking over, when we're only building less than 1% of the overall construction world is mass timber. And then you kind of think and you go out and you look around and look at your roads and your bridges. I mean, the concrete alone is just it's staggering. And so it's laughable almost that you do have some of those sides who are against building with mass timber instead of using like a hybrid model. That was a little bit long-winded. But what? What are your thoughts on? Like real world start a storage? Uh, when it comes to carbon and traditional concrete versus mass timber okay, I'm gonna unpack that a little bit at a time.

Speaker 1:

First of all, there's no question that wood stores carbon. The question is, how long will it store it for? Is it storing it for a week, as in a newspaper, that may get burned? Does it store it for 100 years in a building that we build? Is it stored for 1,300 years, like a couple Japanese and Chinese temples? So the question is not whether wood stores carbon, it's how do you measure the benefit of that to us? Today we know that wood will have what's a half-life, that a certain amount of wood every year is going to come out of buildings. It's going to get landfilled and make it reused, but there is going to be a carbon impact of that removal. So we can't say that it's permanent storage. Likewise, we know that any delayed emission, which is what stored carbon is, has a cumulative climate benefit over time. So we know it's not zero between zero and 100%, which is I'm not trying to be glib or anything, but is that's the challenge. Under what conditions does it last for 80 years, 90 years? What happens in a landfill? The United Nations Environment Program has just started, on May 21st and 22nd, working groups to determine the critical aspects of assessing biogenic carbon, and it's no surprise that organizations like the American Wood Council, canadian Wood Council, the US Forest Products Lab, forest Products Association of Canada, potlatch there's a bunch of people who have looked into this a lot and realize we need to come up with a way to recognize and measure this With respect to the competition with concrete.

Speaker 1:

When I look at the CLT and it's not just CLT that competes with concrete You've got LSL, lvl, osl, psl anything with an acronym that is made out of wood competes with concrete, of sorts. But if you look at just CLT, I said earlier it's about 2.8 million cubic meters of CLT. Is the capacity by the end of 2025. By the end of 2025, the global capacity for concrete is expected to be 25 billion cubic meters. Okay, that's 10,000 times more volume than wood. So CLT is a real small player in the competition with concrete.

Speaker 1:

But what CLT is doing is it's changing people's perceptions of what's possible with wood, which opens it up to other wood products, whether it's glulam, whether it's an LVL, and new systems that have come in, hybrid systems like the wood, steel, concrete composite floor that's taking away from concrete and steel by putting wood in. So it's that which they're trying to head off at the pass. But every wood building that I'm familiar with in the last 25 years has a concrete foundation and a lot of those buildings wouldn't have been built unless they were built out of wood. So we got to learn to live with concrete and I think the future is going to be hybrid design.

Speaker 1:

It's not going to be 40-story all-wood buildings with oak pins. It's going to be steel cores or concrete cores or steel brace frame cores. It's going to have steel connectors. It's going to have concrete and reinforced steel, reinforced concrete foundations, and we have to learn to say what's the best way to build this building to achieve what we need Low carbon, low cost, beauty, performance, ease of deconstruction, reusability all those factors are coming into play.

Speaker 2:

There's a question that we always ask everyone. We'll ask you too, but it's what would you do to change the world? Or if you could change anything in the world in the mass timber industry, what would you change and why? And mine, I wish that there would be a visual in the middle of Times Square, new York or, you pick it, any major city, where it showed the process of how to mine iron ore to create steel beams and then also the process of I don't know if you've seen these horrific images of third world countries completely being literally sucked off of the globe because they're trying to find the sand and the gravel to produce all of this concrete.

Speaker 2:

There's this statistic about how we're building New York every single month throughout the entire world world, and if people realize the unbelievable amount of gravel and sand that we're needing to suck from the beaches, and then also the iron ore, the mountains, compared to and that was a long-winded way to describe compared to harvesting a tree and replanting that, what evil do you want to choose to build your home or your high rises out of? Personally, I'm going to use a hybrid model, traditional mass timber frame, and so it's just tough, because do you want to save the world or not, and I guess some people don't, but that's.

Speaker 1:

I've had that same sort of thought that we need to educate people around wood. But if I was to change the world to make for a more astute and responsible construction sector and design sector, I would require not request but require that every post-secondary institution that is teaching anything to do with construction that could be design, it could be engineering, it could be contractors, builders, electrical that they understand wood as a material. If you don't understand wood and there's four basic structural materials we typically use wood, steel, concrete and stone and masonry. Yes, you know there's bamboo and there's straw, bale and stuff, but really the major structural components are those. If you don't understand those four, that's sort of like being a chef who doesn't understand vegetables but understands grains, meat and fish and dairy. Okay, so you know how to cook something, but you don't know how to really integrate all of those things into a meal.

Speaker 1:

Architects, engineers, contractors need to understand that we have to integrate these materials into the building to give us what we need and what we want. The only building I know of that is made with a single material is called an igloo, and no one wants to live in those year round 24-7. So I think we have to understand that every building is already a hybrid build. We'd like to see it shift to more wood, but we have things to get in order to be able to do that. Understanding by designers, engineers, building officials, fire officials. That's the work that we've been doing for 25 years and it has to continue to be done until people go oh, building a building, what is it? Oh, it's wood. I guess. Why, do you ask? Because it's not important. It may be important to us, but it's not important. It's just that the building is being built really responsibly, and that includes building buildings that give us what we need, not just what we think we want.

Speaker 1:

Okay, yes, I was on a call last week with a group of very, very talented passive house designers Many of them already use Best Sugar. I know them, and they were saying we need to build what we need, not what we can afford. And I know when I built my house, I thought, gee, I can afford just this much. That's what my mortgage is. I probably could have gotten away with 200 or 300 square feet less and been a little less stressed for the years I was paying off my mortgage. But we tend to build to our economic capacity, not to our environmental or to our physical needs capacity, and I think that would really change the world and make it a bit more equitable place and still use a ton of wood.

Speaker 3:

What would you say to people that would come with the opinion that mass timber doesn't contribute to affordable projects or, specifically, affordable housing, when you talked about before we hit record that that's one of the biggest, if not the biggest problem that we collectively face as society is lack of affordable housing, how do you think mass timber fits into that conversation?

Speaker 1:

Well, in Europe there's a lot of companies that thrive building mass timber modules for student residences, for apartments, for hotels. So the fact that it's not affordable here doesn't mean that it's not affordable or practical. The other thing is we need to move beyond. What is the price? The price is how big your check is. At the end of the day, that's the bottom right-hand corner of your spreadsheet. But what's the cost?

Speaker 1:

There's a cost to doing certain things. You want to use steel or concrete or you want to use labor that's 7,000 miles away because it's cheap. There are costs in our society to doing those things and there's costs to not doing things. If we don't build buildings efficiently and well so that they can last a long time, that's a cost. We don't look at that. We look at what the price is. Ultimately, we need to say what's the value?

Speaker 1:

Is that building better, having been built, than if it hadn't been? Is it healthier for us to be occupying that than another building? Does it enhance our ability to be productive or learn or heal or play? How many people love to go to a bunker other than a squash court, but to go to a bunker to play with their kids? So we like the feel. So there's a place for all of those materials, and I think it's up to us to be able to contribute to the needs of society as we go forward. Affordability is one of the real societal challenges. Wood has a role to play, but it's not the only solution. So does that sort of give you lots of stuff but nothing?

Speaker 3:

No very concrete pun intended answer.

Speaker 1:

Okay, in our world, if someone uses we need a concrete solution we charge them five bucks. So you got off on this one.

Speaker 3:

I'll drop it in the donation jar on the way out to the next event. On that note, what do you think the biggest opportunities for the industry are in the next five years? Where should people be paying attention?

Speaker 1:

Well, that's two questions when are the opportunities and where should they be paying attention? I think the opportunities are going to be seeing how mass timber can work in building types that are not currently acceptable. That's going to come about with code changes, with research and testing. You know, two years ago the CWC, international Research Council, did a very, very large series of fire tests with CLT and that would be very valuable information to give comfort and understanding to building officials and fire officials. The opportunity to expand into other building types, whether it's taller wood, whether it's bigger buildings, whether it's warehouses, big box stores. There's different issues which drive each of those. I think a real opportunity and there's a real need is what are the systems that we can develop that make it easy and fast and more affordable for mass timber?

Speaker 1:

You've all been in buildings which are basically steel, tilt-up, concrete, open web trusses, steel roof deck Very, very cost-effective, but if you want to heat it it's going to cost you an arm and a leg. Those are typically built by people who aren't going to be occupying the space. So there's a whole bunch of things in. There is who's going to occupy it? Who's building it? If it's, a person says I got 15 million bucks build me a building and I want it sold in seven months and goes off to the next project. They're not going to build with wood. We have to accept that If buildings are too big maybe they can't be built with wood, Although some of the biggest buildings I've seen were aerodromes in World War II, so those are pretty big buildings.

Speaker 1:

They were with glulam, I think. Also coming up with systematic approaches that enable that cost-effectiveness for modularity, for remote housing, for high performance, I think those are opportunities. And you know what? I'm not a genius in this area. There's a bunch of architects I know who probably have some ideas that today we might consider wingnut and five years we're going to go. Why didn't we do that sooner?

Speaker 2:

The industry is moving fast. It's exciting times. Well before we ask our last question where can people connect with you to learn about mass timber and put some projects on the map?

Speaker 1:

Well, I guess I mean I work with the Canadian Wood Council. In the United States there's the American Wood Council and we're involved with them. They're involved with us. We work really really well with them on a lot of wood issues. In the US there's a woodworks program. We have that in Canada as well. We have technical advisors situated across the country. I think that's a really good start. The technical staff at Woodworks in Canada and the US are really really good. They understand the needs of the various players in this field, and the other really good thing, I think, is that if they don't have the answer, they probably know who does. I would strongly recommend that your first stop, if you're curious, is go to Woodworks or American Wood Council or Canadian Wood Council.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, we're big fans of everybody at those organizations. We point everybody that we can out to get them. There's just no better pool of experts to draw from and, like you said, if they don't know they know who knows Exactly. So the last question we'll leave you with is you've got somebody in an elevator, you've got their ear for two minutes. What do you tell them about mass timber?

Speaker 1:

I would ask him what's important? Is the environment important, cost important, comfort, health, society, equity and all that kind of stuff? Because mass timber has a role to play in delivering a lot of those things that we want of our built environment. Increasingly, carbon is going to be a driver Carbon as we tell the industry here. It's not an option. You have to understand how carbon is going to play a role in your business. Mass timber is a key player in that respect. So is lumber. My elevator speech would if I were to invent a material that's renewable, recyclable, reusable, biodegradable, organic, cleans the air, cleans the water, sequesters, carbon gives us something that is lightweight, strong, ubiquitous, diverse, inexpensive and beautiful, I'd be rich. We already have trees and they give us wood. We need to use more of that. Grow more forests. Grow more wood, use more wood. I think I got it. Depending on how tall the building is, I have a couple more, a few more seconds to go.

Speaker 2:

Love it we can all get on board with that bandwagon. Out of curiosity, when you were talking, I had to look up how much sand is actually being taken from this earth every year. So this is from a BBC article that said the most consumed natural resource on the planet besides water, is sand. Some 50 billion tons of sand and gravel, called aggregate, is used every year, which is an amount large enough to blanket the entire United Kingdom, and so this is supposed to grow by 4x. The talking heads out there are speculating that's supposed to grow another 4x in the coming decades. So we've got to look some other places. And well, if you can look right in our forest, I mean, they're not hiding.

Speaker 1:

And you know what I think that really plays to. Are we building what we can afford and what we want, or are we building what we need? So the sufficiency is a key word. That's sort of come in to the language over the last little while. And there's lots of sand In Northern Africa. There's lots of sand, but it's not the kind of sand that can be used in concrete, because you need to have sand that has flat edges. Windblown sand is like little tiny ball bearings, hard to apply a force. So I've got some colleagues and friends in the concrete industry. They're well aware of this. They're looking for solutions as well.

Speaker 1:

Recovery of existing concrete may be a way to reduce the sand requirements, but it really comes down to if we're going to build, are we using? Are we smart enough to use what we have to use in that particular application? And wood has been getting short shrift in that for the last almost 100 years and it's now coming back and people are going. What role does it have to play and what do I need to know? We used to build tall buildings 125 years ago. So when people say, oh, we finally learned how to build tall buildings, no, it's not that we've learned how to do it. It's that we forgot. We ever did.

Speaker 2:

That's huge. Well, you're a breath of fresh air and we need more people out. You shooting it straight. So hey, well, hopefully we can have a round two and we can talk a little bit more on how to change the world's mindset At your convenience. All right, take care, peter Cheers. Thanks guys.

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Brady Potts

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Nic Wilson

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