Timber Finance shakes up the carbon credit market

A banker with a forest

Erik Reichmuth, Managing Director, worked for twelve years as a wealth manager at Julius Bär and manages just over a hectare of forest on the Pfannenstiel with his brother. Construction causes a quarter of Switzerland's CO₂ emissions, and building with timber is a lever for meeting climate targets, he says. In Switzerland, one to two million cubic metres of sawlogs go unharvested, while around three quarters of construction timber is imported. The first business area is the tracker certificate, a basket of 23 listed forestry and timber companies, mainly from North America and Europe, available on SIX from CHF 100.

Decarbonising the construction industry is a Herculean task.

A pilot project with 20 timber buildings

The second area is carbon removal credits for timber construction. Twenty timber buildings in Switzerland were selected for a two-year pilot project, including the «Pünt» replacement building of the Eigengrund housing cooperative in Egg ZH: 7,050 square metres of floor area, around 2,000 tonnes of CO₂ in the structure, of which a conservative 1,462 tonnes are certified, plus 508 tonnes of avoided emissions. After deducting 20 to 30 percent for sales and project costs, around 50 percent of revenues are to go to developers and 20 to 30 percent to forest owners. Six forest districts in Basel-Landschaft, Valais, Graubünden and Zurich are taking part. In the same issue, ZürichHolz AG explains in “Kaskadennutzung beginnt bei der Schlagplanung” how timber should go to construction first and only then to energy.

How Timber Carbon sees it

Shortly after publication, the pilot phase officially started, as summarised in our article on Moneycab. Timber Carbon, launched in 2026 as a spin-off of Timber Finance, quantifies, certifies and monetises the carbon removed in mass timber buildings as carbon removal credits on the voluntary carbon market. The call for pilot projects is described in the Lignum news item.