Wood a wonder material

Address to launch the NZ Wood project and website, West Foyer, Beehive

A little over a year ago I spoke at a forestry industry workshop about a wood promotional campaign. And I recalled an observation by the renowned forestry visionary Wink Sutton. He used to say wood is such a remarkable material that, if it were discovered for the very first time today, it would be hailed around the world. It would be the answer to environmental problems and development problems the world over.

Wood is a wonder material. And its properties are summed up in the tagline for the NZ Wood project we are here to launch: "For a better world."

No other product can claim to store carbon dioxide, reduce the use of energy-intensive substitute materials, and displace fossil fuel by burning waste materials.
Wood makes the world better, because it is an environmentally friendly product. The carbon dioxide produced from using wood is recycled back into more wood by regenerating forests within a few decades. In contrast, the carbon dioxide from fossil fuels is added to the atmosphere.

Wood is environmentally friendly because it is energy efficient. Compared to wood substitutes like steel and concrete, it needs less than a tenth of the energy.
Recent research in New Zealand shows that building in wood can be eight percent cheaper than concrete and five percent cheaper than steel over the fifty year life of a building.

So why isn’t wood used more? What’s the problem?

Researchers can't find any technical or financial reason preventing greater use of wood in commercial buildings.

The major barrier seems to be that we get used to doing things a certain way. Building owners, quantity surveyors and building designers probably get used to things being done a certain way. We often say to ourselves, "if it's such a good idea, why doesn't everyone do it?" And there are few examples of commercial or public buildings constructed predominately from wood. So there is a Catch-22: the fewer wood buildings we have, the fewer people want to be the first.

The NZWood campaign is going to set out to break the Catch-22 by providing high-quality information about wood and its advantages.
The budget for this wood promotion campaign will be $4.8 million through to June 2009. Three quarters of that funding is from the government through the Forest Industry Development Agenda.

It's a good example of the advantages of the government working in partnership with the private sector.

And I look forward to hearing all the critics of 'picking winners' say that the government should not be supporting this campaign. Wood is a winner, and I am happy to pick it.

It's funny how all those critics of so-called 'picking winners' go very quiet when the actual specifics are announced and people have to say whether they line up behind our Kiwi industries or not.

But, of course, it is not about 'picking' a winner at all. It's about identifying where we have a strength and where we can accelerate success through a partnership approach.

We can achieve more results, faster, with widespread spillover benefits, by working together. It's better than individual wood and forestry businesses trying to promote wood on their own.

In any case, this is a kick-start. Most of the industry recognises the project will need a much longer timeframe. At least ten years is talked about often, which would take the project out to 2016.

I hope the industry commits itself to this campaign for the long haul and maintains its enthusiasm. One reason we need this campaign is that there have often been problems sustaining significant initiatives in the past with adequate funding.

So it's a highlight of this project that it is a focal point for co-operation across the industry under the Woodco umbrella.

This campaign will help forestry develop as a vibrant, commercially sustainable and internationally competitive sector.

A vibrant forestry sector is more likely to attract renewed investment in planting trees.

Over the last decade or two, wood has been losing market share to substitute products, most of which are less sustainable.

There are alternatives to wood. Every use of wood you can think of has a competitive substitute.

But substitutes also have features that economists call 'externalities'. Many wood substitutes are made using fossil fuels, or they involve environmentally damaging processes. They might pollute or they might pump carbon dioxide from fossil sources into our atmosphere.

The world now knows about climate change and we have to start taking seriously the damage we are doing to our atmosphere. If we are serious about cutting down the amount of carbon dioxide we're putting in our atmosphere, then wood is part of the solution.

The NZ Wood campaign will result in more wood being used in commercial buildings.

I went to Finland, where using wood is second nature, and looked at a similar campaign that they ran. The use of wood there is widespread, and still there was room for a successful promotional campaign to increase that use even further.

The government is supporting the wood industry because it will result in more trees being planted.

More trees help to reduce the impact of climate change, and that's vital for New Zealand, because we are more exposed to the effects of climate change than any other developed country.

More trees will help to achieve our goal of becoming the world's first truly sustainable country. If we can achieve that goal alone there will be spin-off benefits to other industries, as consumers increasingly demand higher standards of environmental responsibility.

Sophisticated consumers with awareness of environmental concerns often have a higher disposable income. Imagine those sophisticated consumers walking into a shop and seeing products with a NZWood brand mark. Imagine a designer or architect in an environmentally-aware market seeing our brand as they browse through a catalogue. Imagine the power of the brand mark if it can differentiate our products from others with less of an environmental claim to make.

At the other end of the scale from a brand mark, the NZWood project will also provide detailed information about wood. Designers and engineers will be able to find technical information on the internet on topics like span tables and loading data.

This will be more important from late next year when new requirements take effect requiring new government projects to consider building in wood.

NZWood stands to be a very valuable campaign for our environment, our economy and our lifestyles. I wish it every success, and I have much pleasure in formally launching the NZWood campaign.