Wood Products Pivotal To New Zealand Meeting Our Climate Change Targets

Government support for boosting wood processing as outlined in NZ’s second emissions reduction (ERP2) plan is a step in the right direction says the Wood Processors and Manufacturers Association.

‘Scientific evidence is clear that wood processing can reduce gross emissions by producing high-value products to replace emission intensive ones such as steel and concrete’, said WPMA Chief Executive, Mark Ross ‘having this fact specified within ERP2 highlights that the government now acknowledges the need to implement policies and initiatives targeted at improving the investment environment for high-value wood processing’.

“Countries are in a race to seize the benefits and the opportunities wood provides in the transition to a net-zero world,” said Ross, “countries are using industrial policies to position their companies in rapidly forming global value chains. Initiatives outlined within ERP2 are a start, but there is a lot more that can be done to create an environment that supports our domestic wood processing market.”

One initiative, for example, to achieve this boost that appears to have been overlooked in ERP2 is the MBIE procurement policy that is aimed at reducing carbon emissions in building and construction.

Yet as a comparison with the wool sector, there is now a Minister for wool, with wool procurement being a coalition policy. ‘As ‘environmental goods’ wool and wood share the same sustainable qualities. Hence, the wood processing and manufacturing industry calls for an equivalent government procurement policy for wood as with wool’, said Ross.

The potential for New Zealand wood products to reduce the carbon footprint of the built environment and drive the growth of a sustainable and prosperous wood industry is immense. In the future we expect that wood solutions will become more mainstream, and their demand will increase. The low-grade logs we currently export could be used to produce high-value wood products, such as GluLam, remanufactured timber, and laminated veneer lumber.

With an increase in wood processing the biproducts of wood, such as adhesives, paints, polymers, advanced packaging, refined carbon, textiles and plastics will also be able to be developed. All of this will not only benefit our economy but will also support our future climate change goals in a sustainable manner.

Other notable points for the wood products industry within the ERP2 include:

• progression of the investigation of providing NZ ETS credits for wood processors based on the embedded carbon captured in longer-life timber products,
• improving the resource consenting framework for wood processing to make it easier to establish new facilities and to re-consent existing ones,
• continuation of the wood processing growth fund,
• increasing biomass availability, and
• establishment of a wood bioenergy taskforce.

More details can be found here: https://environment.govt.nz/publications/new-zealands-second-emissions-reduction-plan/

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