Wood Towers Become New Target for Greenwashing Claims

This article is part of the Bloomberg Green series
Timber Town, which looks at the global rise of timber as a low-carbon building material.

The number of people living in urban areas around the world will swell by upwards of 2 billion over the next three decades. Many of those people will need new homes. But building those with conventional materials would unleash a gusher of carbon dioxide: Concrete, steel, glass and bricks for construction make up a combined 9% of global CO2 emissions, according to research by the United Nations Environment Program.

Enter engineered wood, a seemingly no-brainer solution. Mass timber ...