Thank you, Jean-Pierre.
Thank you, committee, for taking the time to hear this presentation. I hope to speak to the scientific argument under discussion, and hopefully we'll get more into the details in the question period.
If you look at slide 5, you will see a slide that's very similar to what Michael presented earlier with the forest carbon cycle. What's important to understand is that carbon by weight is made about 50% from carbon, and that carbon comes from the atmosphere. It's being drawn from the atmosphere. If you look at the top, carbon dioxide goes into photosynthesis, ends up in the material, and gets stored for a short-, medium-, or long-term period, depending on whether we use it in buildings, in fuels, in panels, or in pulp and paper. We do have some feedback cycles where, if the material reaches the end of life, it can be recycled into panels, and it can be used for energy recovery, so there are multiple feedback loops. It's that connection between the forest and the forest products that really can help make a difference in terms of the mitigation of climate change, as Jean-Pierre pointed out.
Turning to slide 6, there are a few levers of action that can be used to mitigate climate change. Essentially, I've identified three main ones, one being forest management. We can manage forests sustainably, as we do right now in Canada, and even more, intensify the forest management to increase the productivity of the forests, generate more lumber and more products from the forest, but also increase the forest carbon stocks. Research shows that it can be done, and it has been done elsewhere. Right now it's being more and more considered. In B.C. they have an approach to do that, and the same in Scandinavian countries.
There is one way to play on the carbon concentration of the atmosphere through the forest. We can also store some carbon in products. Buildings are an excellent example. Most buildings will last anywhere between 80 to 120 years, and that carbon doesn't go back to the atmosphere until we send it back there, either in the form of energy recovery or decomposition in landfills. There are multiple ways carbon is going to make its way back to the atmosphere and then re-enter that cycle again.
Finally, the last way we can make a difference in terms of concentration of GGs in the atmosphere is through the substitution of fossil or high embodied emission products, such as concrete, steel, and other building materials that are not renewable.
Those are the ways we can act and make a difference on climate change through both forest and forest products. As some of the previous presenters have mentioned, a positive side effect of that is that in doing that, we're generating revenues and jobs in Canada, because our companies are largely based in Canada.
I think it's important to point out, as I mentioned before, that carbon composes about 50% of wood's mass, which means there's actual carbon being stuck in the material. What's important to understand is that, when we harvest from the forest, most of that carbon is not in the material itself; it's in the soil and it's in the litter on the ground. It's being cycled in the ecosystem, so really, what we're doing when we're harvesting wood is taking some of the interest, but most of the capital stays in the forest. That's an important point to make that sometimes gets missed.
Slide 8 is a very good example of a life-cycle assessment, a life-cycle analysis, a case study of two functionally equivalent buildings. They are in the same area, and they are two very similar designs. One is a building made from concrete and steel, and the other is a CLT building. What the graph essentially shows is that the emissions that are generated in manufacturing the products that go into both buildings are significantly lower, 40% lower, in the wood building.
Jean-Pierre was referring to the faucet aspect. This is where that faucet is being turned off, so reducing emissions. The important point to make is that this is definitely not a building that has been optimized and is 100% wood. There are a lot of materials in this building, such as steel rebar, concrete, rockwool, and there is room for more optimization for biogenic and biosource products to enter those types of buildings in the future, as we continue to innovate.
Slide 9 shows two buildings representative of the buildings being built today. Those buildings are using common and standard products, yet more and more are working toward new generation biomaterials, insulation products, decking products, so all kinds of new wood solutions that will integrate more wood into our building systems in a safe manner, which is also code compliant.
I'll skip slide 10 and go directly to slide 11.
The results I have shown for building comparison is based on a very extensive scientific data collection. As Michael Giroux mentioned earlier, there are tools available today for industry practitioners to benchmark their buildings and do an assessment of the embodied emissions. The Athena impact estimator and the Canadian Wood Council and Cecobois have tools which are also quite good and very practical. It just goes to show that the information is there and the tools are there. It can always improve, but those are very good pieces.
I just want to leave you with something said by the IPCC, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which essentially encapsulates what the main statement of the presentation has been. The biggest difference we can make in fighting climate change is by maintaining and increasing forest carbon stocks and at the same time producing a constant yield of products and materials. It's by adding those two elements that we can make the biggest difference.
I will leave it at that. Thank you.