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Climate Adaptation

Silicon Valley Falls for European Climate Tech Made of Timber

Massive, compressed slabs of wood provide an answer to the world’s concrete problem

A spruce tree mountain forest in the alpine valley near Freistritz am Kammersberg in Austria. Using a high-tech manufacturing process, wooden spruce planks are processed into slabs of cross-laminated timber, able to bear thousands of tons of weight.

A spruce tree mountain forest in the alpine valley near Freistritz am Kammersberg in Austria. Using a high-tech manufacturing process, wooden spruce planks are processed into slabs of cross-laminated timber, able to bear thousands of tons of weight.

Photographer: Akos Stiller/Bloomberg

Nestled among spruce forests in an Alpine valley in southern Austria, a workshop was the first some two decades ago, to begin manufacturing a green new material that’s now super-sizing wooden buildings and speeding the adoption of a solution to mitigate climate change. 

“We can build very quickly and cleanly with it and that’s the key,” said Marco Huter, a 57-year-old executive surrounded by giant slabs of cross-laminated timber, called CLT, at his KLH Massivholz GmbH factory.