 I'm standing on top of one ton of stored carbon dioxide That's a pretty incredible thing to say that because our cities are built out of concrete and steel And they have been for the last century and concrete and steel are great materials They've done an incredible job, but concrete and steel both are huge energy footprint materials and huge carbon dioxide footprint materials We haven't really had an alternative until now This one cubic meter of wood stores carbon instead of emitting carbon and that change is something that we have to take Advantage of so I'm here to talk to you about tall wood buildings, but I'm really here to talk to you about climate change and world housing The building industry in general in North America Has a footprint larger than any other industry when it comes to energy from building and operating buildings It's about half of our energy and from a greenhouse gas point of view Clearly we have to change the way we build if we're going to be able to tackle climate change issues and the environmental issues ahead of us But again, we need an alternative and the reason we need an alternative to happen very quickly Is that ultimately 40% of the world in the next 20 years are going to need a new home? That's three billion people that will need a new building and if we build the way We've been building for the last century and our footprint is 50% come from buildings of carbon dioxide Then clearly we are headed in a path that won't work We need an alternative the alternative that we come up with has to be about where we build it No longer can we build in and think that we're going to solve climate change issues by building Sustainable buildings in our suburbs. We have to recognize the world is urbanizing at this incredible rate And our buildings are going to be big tall buildings We're moving from an earth that set 50% urban to a population that's 70% urban in the next 30 or 40 years Now 80 years ago Thomas Edison a real icon of innovation of the last century said these words I put my money on solar energy. What a what a source of power Now he said those words and it's a great thing in the context of this conversation Because wood is the only material major material that we can build with that's already grown by the Sun So voted photovoltaics are great, but ultimately the most technologically advanced material we can build with is something that we didn't create Photosynthesis and mother nature hold the patent on what created this incredible material It grows it's rapidly renewable and what's exciting is new products like these in the stack are engineered products made of small trees glued together to make huge panels that basically change the scale of what's possible our Agricultural industry has sort of learned that we need to capture the qualities of the earth and grow our food and we've learned to buy local buy Local food that's that's produced in a safe and Healthy way what we have to get accustomed to is this idea that the earth is also a great opportunity for us to grow our homes We've lost that for the last century But it's possible today What we've been doing is talking about an engineering the possibility of building 30 story tall wood buildings Which is a staggering number for a lot of people people take a while to adjust to that And the reason that we're talking about the potential of 30 story buildings is because there's been a change in what wood is really about When I say wood buildings most most people assume that I'm talking about two by fours two by four construction Well two by four constructions a little bit like those eight dot bricks of Lego that we all had when we were kids and there Was millions of them in the pile in our basement that we could play with two by fours or those little blocks of Legos We could build all kinds of things But do you remember when you were a kid and you would sift through that pile of Lego and eventually find one of those big long 24-dot blocks and all of a sudden you could build something bigger you get span a better distance you build quicker Well, that's the shift that's happened to wood these panels are made 64 feet long and eight feet wide and in various thicknesses Up to 12 inches thick. We're not talking about two by fours anymore. We're talking about entirely new scales 24-dot blocks that allow us to build in these very new ways in a very safe way and we're starting to do it This is a project for City Hall in North Vancouver where we use these mass panels to span the atrium space But people keep asking me is 30 really possible and they challenge that idea. It seems so different than what we're used to Well, 1400 years ago this building in Nara Japan was built and it's 19 stories tall And it still stands today in a high earthquake zone and a wet climate and there are buildings all around the world Historic buildings hundreds of years old that are like this that were very tall But the industrial revolution challenged that and we started only building a steel and concrete and forgot the power and the potential of wood Only 130 years ago the first skyscraper was built in Chicago and it was only 10 stories tall That's the definition of a skyscraper 10 stories tall and people were afraid to walk underneath that building The the mindset that shifted in only 100 years was such actually in less in 50 years Was to go from a 10-story building being afraid to walk under it To the skylines of new york and the skylines that around the world We don't ever think twice about walking under buildings Gustav Eiffel when he built the Eiffel tower Was engineering at a level that nobody had imagined and city council in paris said You know many people in city council said this building is ugly It has to be torn down five years after the world's fair and many people say it's not possible to build But of course by doing it two things happened One is it became the symbol of france and the other is that it's set upon us a race for innovation to push engineering higher To stretch our dreams and our imagination of what's really possible And that imagination stretching led to the skylines again around the world and a race for height that started to happen In places like new york and chicago And that race for height was great But it brought us to this point where we're building in the wrong material and we knew it need a new way to think about buildings So we've developed something we call fftt and fftt is a way to build these wood buildings Up to 30 stories tall cost effectively fire safe. We can build them Quickly we can build them In in high earthquake zones and we've been able to really analyze what's possible And we know that this is possible But we also know we have a lot of things to do to convince people that they're ready for them That convincing is the same exercise that happened 100 years ago It's shifting our minds is the challenge not shifting the engineering the engineering the science exists But we need to move beyond what we think is possible and try things We're at a knifel tower moment again the climate change is gender has really changed the way we think about need to think about buildings And a knifel tower moment is about saying we need to stretch for the stars. We need to dream big So right here in vancouver. We have a proposal that we hope comes through It's not through yet to build the world's tallest wood building that'll be 16 to 20 stories tall And we're hoping to be able to announce it this summer that it'll happen We know that if it's not this one, it's the next one And in fact this race for height is happening all around the world just last week melbourne australia announced that they're going to build The tallest wood building which is 10 stories Um, there's a nine-story building in london england These heights don't seem high, but neither did it in 1885 when that first 10-story skyscraper was built And of course in a very short amount of time we moved from 10 to 110 So we're on the cusp of this incredible opportunity and ted is about ideas. We're we're spreading But this is really an idea that's worth implementing We need to get off the ground and move quickly because we're running out of time buildings have to change the way we think So it's time to start our engines And the race is on. Thank you