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Manufacturers and builders are looking beyond traditional materials, and beginning to embrace crop-based materials. Here’s what you need to know.
Plastic is light and durable, but it’s made from petroleum, which is expensive and contributes to climate change. Other materials are energy-intensive to make, costly to transport or not readily renewable.
For manufacturers and builders, what’s the alternative to these materials? Crops like hemp, flax and wheat, for starters.
“The marketplace is excited about these crops for the same reason farmers are sometimes frustrated growing them,” says Trevor Kloeck, Alberta Agriculture and Rural Development’s (ARD) Edmonton-based Leader for Ag Fibre Business Development. “They have extremely tough fibres, don't decompose quickly and have tremendous tensile strength. Almost anything that’s currently made of plastics or fiberglass is a legitimate market opportunity for fibre crops.”
Green building takes off
What are the biggest contributors to climate change and other negative environmental impacts? Ask most people this question and they’ll likely answer: cars. Fair enough, but to Lori-Jo Graham, there’s another serious environmental culprit that usually gets off scot-free.
“The buildings we live in, work in and shop in are major consumers of natural resources,” says Graham, the leader for ARD’s Green Building Material Initiative based in Olds. “According to one study, nearly one-third of Canada’s greenhouse gas emissions relate to the production, transportation and waste of materials used by the construction industry.”
A whole-building, life-cycle approach
Attending a recent green building conference in Chicago, Graham saw first-hand the fundamental impact that green thinking is starting to have on the construction industry.
“The economic consequences of a building have always received a lot of attention,” she says. “That’s still important, but increasingly organizations and society are also considering the social and environmental costs as well.”
This broader-based reckoning of a building’s true cost extends well before and well after construction. If steel is the main component, what’s the impact of mining the iron ore needed to make the steel? If the builder fancies Italian marble, what’s the impact of shipping it from Italy to, say, Edmonton? How well will the building’s windows insulate during the winter?
For Alberta, possibilities are endless
For many organizations, having a greener building makes financial, social and environmental sense. The good news is, for almost every expensive, climate-changing, non-renewable building material there is, Alberta farmers can easily provide durable, rapidly renewable alternatives.
In fact, as opportunity-hunters like Graham and Kloeck consider what Alberta’s key crops could do, the greater the possibilities seem to be.
“There’s a U.S. company that has a soy-based foam insulation product that can be blown into cracks,” says Graham. “You have to ask whether we could do something like that with canola oil or flax oil here in Alberta.”
Initiatives like these are aimed squarely at a North American green building market that’s big today and getting bigger. As the chart below shows, this is an industry well on its way to $59 billion in annual revenues.
Can Alberta compete?
In any market development process, it’s easy to be partial to your own chances of success and discount those of possible competitors. The fact is, Alberta is only one of many jurisdictions in the world that is able to grow crops like flax, hemp, canola and cereals. Who’s to say Argentina, Alabama and Australia don’t have the same shot as us?
As Trevor Kloeck sees it, Alberta enjoys several competitive advantages worth noting. First, Alberta growers are exceptional managers, able to maximize production and ensure the consistent supply processors will be looking for. Second, the province’s highly capable research community is already working on a range of scientific issues a fibre-crop economy will need to sort out. Third, Alberta producers and processors working closely together can tackle the many and complex market opportunities that are emerging.
“What we need to understand is that the market for fibre isn't about 10 large commodity markets,” says Kloeck. “It’s about 100 or 200 or 500 niche markets, each with different needs, and I am confident we can compete well on that basis.”
Alberta is a mid-sized market within Canada, and a small player globally, but Lori-Jo Graham believes this might work in our favor.
“In a Canadian context, we have a bit of a head start,” she says. “In part because of our hot housing market, over 45% of Canada's environmental residential building is happening here in Alberta. We also have some very capable local manufacturers that are smaller and more nimble than some of the major North American companies in this space.”
Bringing producers, processors and manufacturers together
Farmers can grow the crops. Processors can extract the relevant raw material. Manufacturers can make the materials. But unless each is playing their part in concert with the others, Alberta’s green opportunity won’t meet its potential.
That’s why a major priority for ARD people like Graham and Kloeck is to get each component of the green materials value chain working together.
“Right now we are doing a business case for several green building products derived from Alberta-grown crops,” says Graham. “We are shopping them around to different manufacturers and looking to partner with them on the development of these products.”
One such product development opportunity relates to building insulation made from hemp. In Europe, builders and consumers can already walk into their nearest big-box home renovation store and buy hemp-based insulation. Graham’s team is partnering with a German manufacturer and UK distributor to work with private industry to bring it to Alberta. Once this product gains acceptance in Alberta, the logical next step is to grow the hemp here and manufacture the insulation, too.
In the area of roofing, traditional inorganic materials are fine at keeping the rain out of the boardroom. Today, however, organizations want more. Enter the so-called ‘green roof’, essentially a grass field on top of a building. Green roofs harness the insulation potential of plants to help keep the building warm when it’s cold out and cool when it’s hot out.
In a further example of its approach to green product development, ARD plans to partner with Olds College to install green roofs on two new buildings there. These green roofs would serve functional, research and teaching purposes.
The Alberta Research Council is currently working on a project relating to strawboard made from wheat straw, and studying cereal crop-based roofing and landscaping applications.
Other green product possibilities extend from the parking garage to the penthouse suite: flooring materials, industrial textiles, non-structural panels and doors and even wall coverings.
While building products are one of the more immediate channels for green materials, other areas are attracting attention as well. Environmental products, such as an erosion control mats made of hemp, are used to either protect or clean up natural environments. The area of biocomposites includes a vast array of applications, using plant-based fibres in place of plastic or other materials.
“What's exciting is that these are not obscure applications,” says Kloeck. “These are products the average consumer uses every day. For example, new Ford Mustang cars have seat cushions that are partly made with soy oil. Some BMW models now have door panels partly made of hemp and flax straw.”
This is real
The work of Alberta Agriculture and Rural Development market developers like Graham and Kloeck is taking place in a dynamic marketplace seeking fundamental change. While this new world of green materials will take time to gel, there’s every reason to believe there’s significant opportunity for Alberta farmers, processors and manufacturers.
Says Kloeck: “The market for these crop fibres isn’t something that’s coming in five or 10 years, it’s here today. Within two years, we could have more demand than supply. It’s a huge market and it’s coming together quickly.”
For much more information on the market issues and farming opportunities around green products, visit the Alberta Agriculture and Rural Development website. Start at www.agriculture.alberta.ca and search on BIO-INDUSTRIAL.
Green Building Industry Statistics
Estimated Industry Size (2006) in North America $15.9 Billion1
Canadian share of this market (13% private non-residential, 26% or
6% residential, and 7% public sector) $4 Billion2
Projected Industry Size (2010) $59 Billion2
U.S. residential green building marketplace (2006) $19 Billion2
Projected U. S. residential green building marketplace (2010) $38 Billion2
U. S. Residential Builders Working to Green Specifications (2007) 15%3
1. Green Building Road Map, Employment, Immigration and Industry, 2006. 2. McGraw-Hill Construction Study, 2007. 3. Hoge, Patrick “San Francisco Joins the Green Trend: Many Companies Eager to Build in Environmentally Friendly Manner”, San Francisco Gate, 02/04/2007, Retrieved from Internet, 12/11/2007. |
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