Zürcher Wald devotes issue 4/24 to the future of timber buildings and talks to Erik Reichmuth, Managing Director of Timber Finance, about a market that barely existed at the time: certificates for the carbon a timber building holds. Construction accounts for roughly a quarter of Swiss carbon emissions, which is why Reichmuth calls decarbonising the sector a Herculean task, and why he expects the timber industry to be one of its clear winners.
Outlet
Zürcher Wald
Published
August 19, 2024
Carbon Removal Credits that put a figure on a building
The interview walks through how the mechanism works in practice. The carbon locked into the load-bearing structure of a completed building is quantified, verified and issued as storage certificates. Reichmuth uses the Pünt project as the worked example: around 2,000 tonnes of carbon held in the building, 1,462 tonnes of it certified at the time of the interview.
Die Dekarbonisierung der Bauwirtschaft ist eine Herkulesaufgabe.
Decarbonising the construction industry is a Herculean task.
Why this matters for forest owners
The second half of the interview turns to the forest. Between one and two million cubic metres of Swiss timber go unharvested every year, while three quarters of the construction timber used in the country is imported. Reichmuth argues that revenue from storage certificates flows back along that chain, to the building owner who commissions the timber and to the forest owner who supplies it, and that this is what turns a climate argument into an economic one.
Topics
Source
Zürcher Wald
Forestry magazine for the canton of Zurich
