21 Mar 2025 Embodied Carbon Data for timber products now published

Timber Development UK (TDUK) has published the 2025 Embodied Carbon data for Timber Products. This provides the average carbon data for the 10 major timber product categories.

A fully updated version of the 2024 information, the data allows designers to weigh up the carbon impacts of their material choices. The figures clearly show how selecting a particular timber product will affect the embodied carbon of a design.

This independently verified information calculates weighted average A1-A4 embodied carbon data for all of the most common timber products used in the UK – both including and excluding sequestered carbon. The new publication includes some key updates, not just to the embodied carbon numbers but also to some of the methodology, such as:

• Increased data confidence levels, due to the increase in the number of EPDs available for almost all of the products – in particular engineered products and plywood.
• Refined transport data to account for bulk transport in country of origin and additional distance in UK to end-user site.

The ten timber products covered are:

• Sawn softwoods
• CLT (cross laminated timber)
• LVL (laminated veneer lumber)
• Glulam (glue laminated timber)
• I-joists
• Softwood plywood
• Hardwood plywood
• OSB (oriented strand board)
• MDF (medium density fibreboard)
• Chipboard

In the 2025 update, the average embodied carbon figures for softwood, CLT and I-joists are all lower than they were previously, as are hardwood plywood (although this is still relatively high compared to other timber products) and chipboard.

View and download the 2025 Embodied Carbon Data for Timber Products here.