Peter Pinchot
Username
Peter Pinchot
Proposer First Name
Peter
Proposer Email
peterpinchot@wholeforest.com
Proposer Last Name
Pinchot
Proposer Company/Organization
Whole Forest
Proposer Phone
(845) 649-2458
Boston 2022 Areas of Focus
Proposer Job Title
Cofounder and CEO
Proposer Additional Info
Was an organic dairy farmer, in the 1970s, and then went to forestry school in 1980s. Been working in forestry, conservation, water quality, and biodiversity restoration since then. In 2001, helped found Whole Forest to create anew strategy for protecting endangered tropical forests. This has grown into a community forestry business protecting 60,000 hectares of coastal rainforests in Ecuador and designing and manufacturing tropical hardwood products -- flooring, wall panels, countertops, and furniture, with a focus on green construction markets The business mission is to help forest communities reverse deforestation, restore their forests, and build a strong forest products economy that creates an incentive for sustainable management of forests and bringing forest communities out of chronic poverty. Key objectives are protecting and increasing forest carbon and protecting and restoring threatened biodiversity.
Proposed Session Description
Reducing embodied carbon emissions from building materials is essential to meet Net Zero emissions by 2050, and has become the next big challenge for green construction. To stabilize the climate. we need to start capturing and storing large quantities of carbon in long-term sinks in forests, farms, and in buildings. Key topics covered:
• The critical role of global forests in sequestering carbon and reducing climate change, and the opportunity to double their sequestration impact through climate smart forestry practices.
• How specifying building products made from wood and agricultural wastes can promote carbon sequestration in forests and agricultural soils. And how this carbon impact can result in highly negative carbon products and a large carbon sink stored in buildings.
• The need to expand life cycle analysis to include: 1) carbon performance of forests and farm landscapes that source building materials, 2) substitution of biogenic materials for high carbon materials, 3) providing a temporary carbon sink in products, and 4) supply chain carbon emissions from forests, manufacturing, to delivery to buildings.
• Biogenic building materials covered: mass timber, wood frame, wood fiber, straw, hemp, and modular products.
• Case study: Whole Forest -- Reducing deforestation and promoting forest restoration in Ecuador and providing negative-carbon interior surface products.
Diversity and Inclusiveness
Whole Forest is a community forestry enterprise. We work with very poor forest communities and help them grow a local forest products economy that provides jobs and forest revenues. We hire almost exclusively from the community. Garrett and I are the only non-Ecuadorian employees. Community members are shareholders in the business, and employees receive 15% of business profits. The manufacturing facility is run by four community women, who had no earlier manufacturing experience. They are implementing lean manufacturing, and continuous improvement, and are well accepted accepted by male workers as leaders. We will include this diversity and equity story as a key part of making tropical forestry viable.
Learning Objectives
1. Define the role of global forests as both active agents of carbon capture and storage and in some cases as sources of emissions. Demonstrate how wood products sourced from well-managed forests can significantly reduce a project’s embodied carbon impact.
2. Provide an overview of available biogenic building materials sourced from forests and agriculture and compare their relative capacity to store carbon in buildings and to replace high-emissions materials.
3. Propose an expansion of Life Cycle Assessment for biogenic building materials to include the carbon dynamics of forests and agricultural landscapes that provide raw materials for biogenic products. Demonstrate how the forest/farm carbon balance defines the degree to which the biogenic product can be counted as a carbon emitter or a carbon sink.
4. Present a case study of the large opportunity in tropical forestry to reduce deforestation emissions and increase carbon capture in well managed forests that gain carbon certification. Quantify the negative carbon values generated for building projects that source hardwood interior surface products from these forests.
Has this session been presented before?
Yes
When and Where?
I presented different versions of this session as follows:
• October 18, 2021, UMass Amherst, Building and Construction Technology, 60-minute class lecture with Q&A afterwards
• September 19, 2021, Building Energy NYC, Whole Forest sponsor presentation 30 minutes with Q&A
• May 20, 2021, Carbon Leadership Forum, LA and NYC hubs. 3-Minutes of Brilliance presentation (3 minutes)
• March 22, 2021, New York Green Building Conference, Mass Timber Symposium, SUNY Syracuse, 30 minutes with Q&A
• September 23, 2020, Building Energy NYC, Whole Forest Sponsor presentation, 30 minutes with Q&A
• 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021: UMass Amherst, lecture at Forests and People course, 50 minutes
Each of these sessions was significantly different, but addressed the overall theme of how carbon smart forestry and nature based solutions can result in carbon storage in forests and a large carbon benefit to building projects. I continually integrate the latest developments in forest carbon management and how that impacts building projects.
Additional Comments
I have not yet submitted for other 2022 conference presentations.
Session Format
Presentation followed by facilitated discussion or breakout groups
Other (please describe below)
Session Format Details
If this was a one hour session (preferible), it could work with a 40 minute presentation with facilitated discussion and Q&A or break out groups. This would be more difficult with a 30 minute time slot, it is necessary to define the relationship between carbon dynamics of forests and buildings to stimulate a meaningful discussion. .
Recommended Length
60-minute session
30-minute session
Strongest Content Connection - Boston 2022
Anything else you'd like to tell us about your session proposal?
Our long-term goal is to evolve a sustainable forestry and wood product supply chain that can be broadly replicated to connect tropical forests to green building. We believe that we need to move beyond just considering fossil fuel emissions from building materials (LCA) and towards a more holistic analysis that includes focus on carbon sinks throughout the supply chain. We will probably eventually get to scaling geoengineering solutions to store carbon and block solar radiation. But for now biological sinks and buildings are both operating at scale, and are the most efficient strategy for carbon capture and storage. Once you start thinking beyond just forests or just buildings, the opportunities for synergistic ways to bend down emissions and increase sinks become very hopeful.
Reviewer 1
Hatch, Jen
Reviewer 2
Nedzinski, Megan
Curator
Simons, Mike
Proposal #
151
Session #
304
Committee Decision
Accepted
Presenters
Full Description
Buildings are the source of 39% of emissions, and global deforestation and forest degradation are the source of roughly 10% of emissions. We need to not only reduce emissions in both sectors, but we also need to capture and store large quantities of carbon out of the atmosphere. The demand for building materials can be directed towards supporting climate smart forestry practices that significantly increase carbon storage in forests and that transfer a large carbon benefit to buildings through negative carbon products. By expanding forest carbon sinks and by creating large carbon sinks in buildings, we can make a significant impact on meeting climate change targets.