Green Horizons

These days, who doesn’t want to build green? And since wood, especially wood from American Tree Farm System certified forests, is one of the greenest building materials out there-this should be a boon for timber markets for Tree Farmers right?

Well, not if the US Green Building Council (USGBC) has anything to say about it. And unfortunately, they do. USGBC is home to the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design green building rating system (LEED), one of the most widely used green building rating systems-a tool that builders use to show their buildings are "green."

As your voice in Washington, the American Tree Farm System has been fighting to get your wood products recognized by LEED, and we’ll continue the fight! We know that healthy markets mean healthy forests and Tree Farmers need all the tools and resources they can get to keep their forests healthy and keep them intact for future generations.

USGBC recently released a new rating system, LEED 2012, which would take effect in 2012. The changes proposed are significant-unfortunately, it doesn’t change the story for wood or increase recognition of American Tree Farm System wood.

LEED is widely recognized and frequently used in construction of government buildings and commercial buildings. In fact, 30% of LEED certified buildings are government buildings. While wood is an energy efficient, renewable, carbon sequestering material, LEED has historically done very little to promote the environmental benefits of wood or to encourage builders to choose wood products-essentially blocking wood from the growing green building market.

Builders and architects can collect few credits under LEED for using wood, and the credits that are related to wood products are restrictive. For example, the forest certification credit does not recognize the two largest forest certification standards in North America, the American Tree Farm System® and the Sustainable Forestry Initiative.

The LEED 2012 proposed changes continue to discriminate against wood products compared to other materials. While manufacturers of materials that are mined/quarried, extracted, or biobased have to meet basic responsible sourcing requirements, additional standards are placed on wood products. In the proposed LEED 2012 changes, the old "Certified Wood" credit is gone, replaced with a credit for "Responsible Sourcing of Raw Materials." Wood can only earn this credit by qualifying as "FSC Pure" (meaning 100% FSC), which excludes the majority of certified products on the market today and continues to ignore three quarters of North America’s certified forests. While other materials get credit for responsible sourcing, the majority of forest products cannot, including wood products from ATFS® certified forests.

While LEED 2012 does offer some new changes with potential for increased recognition of wood products, these new changes come with additional questions. For example, LEED 2012 would allow materials, like wood, to achieve recognition through performance-based Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs). LCA and EPDs are tools that scientifically measure and describe the environmental impacts of materials. However, there are more questions than answers for these new tools in LEED, so it is not possible to determine how wood will be treated.

LEED 2012 also proposes to recognize materials for their "biobased" content, and what building material is more biobased than wood? Unfortunately, LEED 2012 relies on the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Biopreferred database. Very few forest products and no wood products for building are recognized in this database because of USDA’s rules for the database.

The American Tree Farm System continues to fight for Tree Farmers in this debate. We know that Tree Farmers need strong markets to grow healthy forests. LEED is a barrier to strong healthy wood markets.

Because the government is one of the largest users of the LEED system, we’ve turned our efforts to asking Congress to provide some stronger direction to the federal agencies, agencies like the General Service Administration and the Department of Defense, who build a lot of buildings and have a big impact on building markets. So far, we’ve had over 100 elected officials helping us out with this! In fact, because of our efforts to fight for wood products, the US Department of Agriculture announced a new effort to build green and build with wood earlier this year.

Green building should offer a wealth of opportunities for wood products from ATFS certified forests, providing Tree Farmers with resources to continue to invest in good management on their woodlands. The American Tree Farm System is your voice in Washington, D.C., urging the U.S. Green Building Council to give wood more recognition in its LEED system and working with government agencies and champions in Congress to recognize multiple green building rating systems in policies. To help us get your wood recognized in Green Building markets sign up for our Grassroots Action Network at www.familyforestaction.org

Melissa Harden is Public Affairs Manager with the American Tree Farm System. She can be reached at mharden@forestfoundation.org or (202) 463-2456.