We are happy to report that Trento, Early Adopter City (EAC) of the Build-in-Wood project, has successfully organized its first workshop with the key stakeholder in the wood value chain on the 20th of November 2020.
The event was organized digitally via GoToMeet by Urbasofia, Habitech and Trento city council. It was attended by 19 local and regional stakeholders (incl. representatives from the County Agency for Energy (APRIE), research institutes (CNR IBE and EURAC), firms and cooperatives activating in the wood construction sector (from both Trento and Bolzano area) and other relevant actors in the wood sector
Takeaways from the workshop
Trento and Sustainability
On track with GHG reduction goals: Trento has exceeded “Europa 2020” targets
The city council is "pro timber" and supports wood buildings
Promotion of the PEFC certification for sustainable management of forest resources
Participation in other European sustainability projects (STARDUST, C-ROADS ITALY2, GREEN CYCLE PROJECTS, ALP TREES, MOSAICO VERDE and COME EASY)
Understanding the city's context
growth in population and population density
less enterprises; slightly more personnel employed
steady decrease in the activities of the construction sector and number of building permits emitted
less retrofitting and extraordinary maintenance works
important increase in tall buildings
main environmental risks linked to climate change are "extreme weather conditions", which may affect forest resources
forest resources are rich and 50% of them are owned by the Trentino city councils’ Consortium.
Timber Buildings in Trento
Italy: 3200 certified wood buildings (2018)
Trentino province: 82 (45 x residential (or similar) buildings / 11 x school infrastructures / 19 x mixed purposes (i.e. offices, culture, commercial)
Chances and challenges for timber construction
Chances
Growth in demand: In the last 3 years, the demand for wood buildings has been growing: great opportunities both for new buildings and retrofitting. Especially retrofitting is very promising considering that 80% of buildings have already 40 years of life.
Limited space: The morphological features of Trento administrative area do not allow extending the built environment - making retrofitting a central necessity.
Modern Living: Beacuse of its naturalness and positive influence on humans, possible chances for timber construction are the creation of community, co-working and co-housing spaces.
Challenges
Named by Stakeholders:
Certifications required at the end of works
Obsolete regulatory framework,
The weakest elements of the value chain: education and innovation systems / local legislation / general cultural barriers especially linked to clients and final users
High fragmentation of forestry ownership: This leads to high prices for acquiring primary resources. Therefore, timber producers prefer to buy the primary resource, after first processing, from abroad. This implies that one link of the value chain (wood primary processing) is actually missing, whilst natural resources are not fully exploited.
Untapped potential of the forestry resources: the fragmentation of property limits the opportunity to cultivate (economically and environmentally sustainable) forests.