As Tony Arnel prepares to step down as deputy chair of Forest and Wood Products Australia, he reflects on the value of timber to our net zero and low ambitions.
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When Lendlease built Forté in Melbourne in 2012 – then the world’s tallest timber apartment building – its cross-laminated panels came from Austria. People thought that was a spelling mistake. Surely, we can grow our own timber in Australia?
After nine years on the board of Forest and Wood Products Australia (FWPA), I’ve watched the carbon conversation mature. What was once a moral argument is now a market reality. Yet the material best placed to cut construction carbon emissions – timber – still battles perception problems, supply chain hurdles and short-term thinking.
The social-licence knot
FWPA’s 2025 consumer research shows Australians prefer wood above all other materials. 60 per cent say it’s their first choice when building or renovating, and three-quarters say material choice matters.
Timber is admired for its warmth, beauty and environmental credentials. Yet non-renewable carbon-intensive materials such as brick, concrete and steel, backed by industries with deep pockets, are seen as stronger and more durable. These perceptions have been sharpened by recent floods and fires.
Australians love timber, but they don’t want to cut down trees, especially if those trees are koala habitat. At the heart of this social-licence issue is confusion between plantations and native forests.
Most Australian construction timber already comes from plantations, but public debate rarely makes that distinction. State decisions to end native forest harvesting in Victoria and Western Australia have hardened perceptions that “timber equals deforestation’” Nuance rarely makes headlines.
In reality, plantation forestry is a renewable cycle: trees are grown to be harvested and replanted, storing carbon in the process. If we don’t grow more plantations, we’ll simply import more timber, often from regions with weaker environmental safeguards and higher carbon emissions from longer shipping routes.
The supply chain we forgot to grow
Australia is a net importer of wood products. Our plantation estate has barely grown in two decades and local supply can’t keep pace with demand.
In the commercial sector, Sydney’s Atlassian Central, billed as the world’s tallest hybrid timber tower, is constructed with glue-laminated (glulam) beams shipped halfway around the world from Austria. Even when shipped from Europe, this timber product carries a far smaller carbon footprint than producing and transporting equivalent concrete.
At the new Sydney Fish Market, more than 1800 cubic metres of spruce glulam arrived from the Dolomites in Northern Italy.
In Perth, Boola Katitjin, the largest mass-timber building in the Southern Hemisphere, features more than 1500 cubic metres of German-engineered glulam, including the biggest beams ever used in our market.
In housing, timber – favoured for millennia – is being displaced by steel. When Covid and war in Ukraine sent structural timber prices soaring by 58 per cent in just six months, many small-scale builders switched to steel. That substitution effect remains.
FWPA’s More Houses Sooner report forecasts structural softwood demand will peak above 2.5 million cubic metres by 2027, with imports potentially exceeding 40 per cent of supply.
The consequence is more than economic. Every cubic metre of imported timber represents a missed opportunity to grow local industry, regional jobs and low-carbon capability. Until we invest in our own plantations and processing, we’re simply outsourcing the carbon benefits and the economic value of timber construction.
Proof timber cuts carbon
When we use local timber, the benefits are clear. FWPA’s headquarters, T3 Collingwood is Victoria’s largest mass-timber building. This achieved a 34 per cent reduction in embodied carbon – the emissions associated with materials and construction processes throughout the whole lifecycle of a building or infrastructure – compared with an equivalent concrete structure.
Global building lifecycle studies tell a similar story. Recent research from Michigan State University found that, when both embodied and stored carbon were considered, mass timber’s global warming potential is around 90 per cent lower than concrete or steel.
Timber is the only mainstream structural material that’s indefinitely renewable, as it actually grows back.
The settings still don’t add up
The 2016 National Construction Code created a Deemed-to-Satisfy pathway for mid-rise timber buildings, spurring on domestic mass-timber production.
NeXTimber in South Australia now produces cross-laminated timber (CLT) and glulam. XLam operates in Australia and New Zealand. Cusp in Tasmania produces the first certified plantation-hardwood CLT in the world. ASH in Victoria produces a range of domestically-sourced hardwood glue-laminated timber systems including beams, columns, floors and roof structures.
Carbon policy could be the lever we need, but it’s not yet pulling hard enough. The plantation-forestry ACCU method is promising, yet 25-30-year crop cycles deter investors seeking quicker returns.
Forest growers are rewarded for additional carbon stored in trees, but there is no direct financial incentive to build with wood, even though half of timber’s weight is carbon removed from the atmosphere. Policy recognition of this benefit would address this material market failure. Then there’s the land-use tension. Plantations barely cover 2 per cent of Australia’s landmass, and that land is under growing pressure from agriculture, housing, conservation and even rare earth mineral mining.
Radiata pine, for instance, needs reliable rainfall – at least 600 millimetres a year, preferably 750. As climate patterns shift, fewer regions will meet that threshold. Future investment in softwood plantations will depend not just on capital and policy settings, but on water.
Three shifts would make a difference. First, stable policy and carbon-credit clarity to encourage long-term money to flow to local plantations. Second, government leadership through embodied-carbon disclosure, procurement and carbon credit methodologies that recognises timber’s true environmental value. Third, enhance building standards and codes to normalise the use of timber construction and wood products.
Looking forward
Serving on the FWPA board has been a privilege. It’s a collegiate, purposeful group governed as a national research and development corporation should be: transparently, accountably and grounded in evidence.
We’ve achieved much, from advancing codes and standards to strengthening public understanding of timber’s climate credentials. But there’s unfinished business. If Australia wants to decarbonise construction, it must grow more of its own timber, invest in advanced manufacturing and back carbon-smart building standards and procurement.
The bottom line: forest plantations are grown to be used. Grow, use, replant. That cycle captures and stores carbon while displacing much higher-emission materials. The next decade could be timber’s time – but only if we have evidenced-based policy and give it room to grow.