As Canadian softwood lumber gets squeezed out of the U.S. market, B.C. homebuilders should seize the opportunity to embrace mass-timber construction, says a leading developer.
“With tariff threats impacting lumber exports, this presents a unique opportunity to harness B.C.'s lumber industry to fuel the rise of mass-timber construction locally,” said an April 8 announcement by Vancouver-based Adera Development concerning a milestone for one of its projects.
Mass-timber buildings are generally less expensive and contain less embodied carbon than concrete ones, but cost more than traditional wood-based methods that use “sticks” of “linear” lumber to frame buildings, said Eric Andreasen, Adera's senior vice-president of sales and marketing.
However, mass timber, which is engineered off-site from multiple layers of wood into large panels, columns and beams, can save considerable time and labour during construction, he said. Mass-timber homes can therefore be competitively priced.
Although the technique currently cannot be used for buildings above 18 storeys, Andreasen said mass timber could achieve environmentally sustainable construction in B.C. if paired with high-performance heating, insulation, appliances and windows.
“The number one thing [for sustainability] is mass timber. Straight out of the gate, that’s the numero uno,” he said.
“If steel was the building material of the 1800s and concrete the 1900s, we believe the 21st century is going to be mass timber because it’s the only thing that, if everyone was doing it, could slow down or possibly even reverse climate change.”
If tariffs threatened by the U.S. materialize, the total levy on Canadian softwood lumber going into the U.S. could total between 45 and 55 per cent, taking into account anti-dumping measures. This in B.C., bringing down costs locally.
Mass timber could potentially ride this wave. After being manufactured off-site, mass-timber components can be delivered on trucks and assembled quickly “like Lego,” Andreasen said.
“When you compare traditionally-built wood buildings to mass-timber buildings, yeah, it has a premium on it because it costs a little bit more, but that premium is moderated by the speed of construction,” he said.
“You don’t need to have a massive framing team on it. … So at the end of the day, our mass-timber products are, on a retail value to the consumer, priced relatively in close competitive alignment with the rest of the market.”
In an April 9 report, Clean Energy Canada said building with lower-carbon materials and methods “doesn’t need to make housing more expensive—and even has the added benefit of supporting Canadian industries at a time of high tariffs and trade tension.”
The climate and energy think tank, housed at Simon Fraser University, conducted case studies exploring material-specific emissions reductions and their cost implications.
Material emissions savings of up to 32 per cent for concrete, 100 per cent for structural steel, 53 per cent for rebar, 55 per cent for drywall, and 98 per cent for insulation were identified at no or negligible cost increases, the report found.
“Where small premiums do exist, in most cases they add less than $3,000 for the material budget, which is a rounding error for multimillion-dollar construction projects and falls within the price variations that construction projects face every day,” the report said.
“Put simply, cutting carbon won’t break the bank.”
