Stora Enso: How wood can help build a sustainable future

Demand for building materials is rapidly growing, driven largely by urbanization and economic growth in emerging economies and the need to retrofit and renovate existing buildings in developed countries. Sustainable wood can meet this growing demand by substituting for existing building materials where possible. This can address climate change objectives by storing carbon in the building stock (beyond the forests) and through lower material manufacturing and processing emissions. To help reap these climate benefits and support the widespread adoption of sustainable buildings from engineered wood such as cross laminated timber (CLT) and laminated veneer lumber (LVL), Stora Enso develops open source “building concepts” (explained in manuals) that detail all phases from building design to maintenance for different types of buildings.

Stora Enso also helps to create so-called ecosystems where material providers, users, contractors and other value chain actors exchange their expertise and insight to improve the delivery process and the sustainability performance of a building. 

Stora Enso’s building concepts promote wood construction and help combat global warming, by improving the carbon footprint of buildings and lowering material manufacturing and processing emissions.

Moving to composite, wood or bio‐based materials can help to reduce embodied carbon in buildings, and through carbon storage help achieve net-zero carbon buildings.

Nevertheless, barriers continue to hinder efforts to introduce and scale up the use of low carbon, renewable wood-based solutions for buildings. Stora Enso’s open source Building Concepts are developed to help overcome barriers and inspire customers and other value chain members to design, construct and maintain sustainable buildings from wood. Based on various building components and products like Cross-laminated timber (CLT) and Laminated veneer lumber (LVL), the building concepts are driven by a cost-competitive analysis done with customers and specifiers in key markets.

These concepts are further explained in manuals detailing all phases, from building design to maintenance. As of today, the focus is on six countries (Austria, Finland, France, Germany, Sweden and the United Kingdom), ensuring that the concepts include country-specific details in accordance with national regulations (e.g. fire safety, acoustic requirements, etc.).  The first Building Concepts developed are for residential multi-story buildings, which cover construction with panels and modules. Stora Enso has also launched a concept for eco-schools and is developing a concept for commercial office buildings.

Stora Enso also aims to help customers make informed decisions by publishing information on the environmental life cycle impacts of its products through third party validated Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs). EPDs can be used by our customers to help optimize environmental performance using whole building life cycle assessments (LCAs) and to achieve green building certification.

Stora Enso furthermore promotes project delivery in so-called ecosystems, which bring together the various actors throughout the value chain, and can help improve the delivery process and sustainability performance of a building by incorporating expertise from actors such as users, material providers and contractors early in the process. 

To build on the success of the first Building Concepts, Stora Enso will replicate this approach and launch Building Concepts for schools and commercial office buildings.

Additionally, to meet the continuously growing demand for sustainable building materials, Stora Enso is investing to develop new CLT production units and has started up CLT rib panel production in Austria. Rib panels offer an effective and cost competitive solution for construction projects that require long load bearing spans, such as commercial and industrial buildings and schools.

Finally, Stora Enso and TRÄ Group have signed a joint development agreement to improve the construction efficiency and increase the digitalization in the industry´s value chain with services for healthy and affordable living. The target is to make the design and specification of wooden buildings easier, attaining smarter manufacturing and construction.