House on Fire: Fixing ‘A Wildfire Year’

The house I’m referencing is not the one you live in, but the one we all live on, our planet.

The historically bad year for wildfires in the west—where the season and frequency of large fires continue to grow—is bringing ecologists and forestry professionals together to find solutions to disrupt the path we’re on.

There’s no doubt we’re heating up the planet. Scientists have known this for some time now and the need to act grows more urgent by the day.

There are solutions right in front of us: switching from fossil fuels to renewables; focusing on electrification; reducing demands for heating and cooling with plain old energy efficiency upgrades that utilize sustainable, carbon negative insulation products like TimberHP.

But what about the fires? Fire is scary. A catastrophic wildfire even more so.

Prescribed burns can reduce their impact. It’s a practice that’s gone on for centuries. But unfortunately, the ideal weather conditions required to do them safely are becoming less frequent also due to climate change. For our 80 million acres of national forests, logging and thinning must be part of the solution.

*Active, sustainable forest management, including thinning fire-prone forests, is a good way to reduce the risk of forest fires. Image Credit: Healthyforests.org*

TimberHP, our line of carbon storing, wood fiber insulation, is also part of this solution.

The feedstock we use to make our loose fill, stud-cavity batt and exterior board products comes from residual wood chips from lumber production, and from the low grade softwood generated dur sustainable forestry practices. Working with our partners in the saw mills and the woods, we purchase this material and turn it into TimberHP wood fiber insulation.

Clearing out low-value, small diameter softwood trees (pulpwood), can be a useful tool for sustainable forestry management. TimberHP provides a market for these chipped pulpwood logs by turning it into high value insulation products that are high performance and carbon storing

Once established in the Northeast market, TimberHP intends to expand to other locations across the country and out west, we’re confident we can be part of the solution, as the region looks for a multi-dimensional strategy to break the cycle of catastrophic wildfires.

We look forward to working with future friends and partners to address this urgent problem.

TimberHP—Insulate Better. Live Better. ^TM