Canada should reach for the sky with high-tech wood highrises

You won’t read about it in the sports section any time soon, but a number of Canadian cities are competing in a high-stakes global race that will directly affect more than 200 of our communities.

The cities — including Vancouver, Toronto, Montreal and Quebec City — are competing against a number of cities around the world to construct the tallest wooden highrise buildings.

The results of this race, for Canadian workers, companies, and the environment, are critical.

In Vancouver, for example, it’s an 18-storey student residence at the University of B.C. that is already under construction, and will soon be one of the tallest mass timber hybrid buildings in the world. In Quebec City, the ground was broken in mid-June on a 13-floor condominium complex that will include 12 storeys of timber.

There’s no mystery to this trend. Builders have always held wood products in high regard because they are widely available, cost-effective, quick and easy to use, durable — and, of course, they look great. But their popularity has grown in recent years for other reasons.

First of all, they are great for the environment. Forest products are sustainable and trees act like nature’s vacuum in the way they absorb carbon, thereby reducing the greenhouse gases that lead to climate change. Trees absorb the most carbon when they’re young and growing and become net emitters as they age. When turned into wood products, however, the carbon is sequestered.

Second, innovation in the forest products sector has made wood, always popular with consumers, even more attractive to builders.

One of those innovations — cross-laminated timber, or CLT — is particularly important in this trend toward wooden highrise buildings. CLT is a multi-layered wooden panel in which layers are stacked perpendicularly and glued together using hydraulic or vacuum presses. From a builder’s perspective, the end result is a material that is faster and less costly to use, stronger, able to be turned into panels off-site and ahead of time — no matter the weather — and sustainable. On top of all of that, because they have heft and the strength of steel, CLT panels have shown to be resistant to both fire and earthquakes, making this innovation superior in many applications.

No surprise then that it’s not just Canadian builders and communities that are starting to wake up to the many benefits of wood.

In the British capital of London, a 100-storey wooden tower has been proposed, as has a 40-storey building in Stockholm and tall wood structures in Australia, Austria, Norway and the United States, just to name a few.

Code changes that permit the use of lightwood frames and massive timber for buildings up to six storeys high, which were included in the 2015 version of the Canadian building code, have been adapted and adopted by Ontario, Quebec and Alberta. B.C. led by adopting a similar provision in 2009.

Changes to the national building codes for wood buildings up to 12 storeys, involving the use of massive timber, have been proposed by the Canadian Wood Council. Quebec has led the way on this matter by developing an alternative code for these types of buildings.

So wood is reaching new heights — and for all the right reasons.

Natural Resources Minister Jim Carr said federal investments in wood R&D “lead to cleaner, more sustainable construction practices, all while promoting the creation of employment opportunities in the forestry sector.”

Canada is off to a good start in the race to make taller, wooden buildings. For the sake of our forest products industry, the more than 200 Canadian communities whose economies rely on it, the industry’s 237,000 employees and our environment, let’s hope we cross the finish line as soon as possible.