> I never saw a house made a wood beside a ski chalet before
Maybe you need to get out more? In France (where I assume you live) new public buildings are mandated to be at least 50% wood or other bio-based renewables. Also ~5% (and increasing) of new domestic builds are timber framed.
I live in NeW Orleans. Where 90% of the housing stock is made of wood.
So the 5% French figures in 2025 confirm my impression. Most stuff are not made of wood in France.
Maybe it’s a language thing : when I say « made of wood » I mean that no stone are involved. There is no percentage. The whole frame is 2 by 4 from Home Depot.
I think this is sort of a more interesting question than the responses you got made it out to be.
Yes, of course, stone doesn’t really grow back on the timescales that we care about. Yes, stone not “bio” in any sense really.
But the goal of the law is not to make biology or geology points. It is to reduce the embodied carbon of new construction. I guess the determination was made that stone has some carbon cost… maybe it comes from the mining?
Or maybe they are trying to kickstart, specifically, a new industry in the field of growable construction material. Maybe they figure stone mining is already well developed tech anyway.
Isn't that just a matter of perspective? Most of the stone where I live is made of limestone which is from dead organisms. To the point that you can just break it open and find fossils throughout it.
That isn't renewable in the timeframe of humanity, but in the age of the universe it's renewable.
Good point, there are bio stones, but they are not renewable by our reference. But the vulcano stones are. And we have really lots of other stone underneath. No shortage of them. I would count them renewable.
Actually no. The situation that allowed that to happen, won't happen again in our biosphere. There are now microbes that break down decaying plant matter very quickly. So you won't ever get substantial amounts of oil being formed in the earth's crust.
I also took physical science courses in middle school. Just because new stones are formed within the earth's crust at some marginal rate does not mean that they are considered a renewable resource.
We're talking about stone in general. Volcanic stone is one type of stone, which does not cover all of the applications of stone as used in buildings, masonry and other industries today. I also specifically addressed volcanic stones in a sister comment.
Some rate of formation is not enough to satisfy the commonly held definition of renewable resources. Google "is stone a renewable resource" for a jumping off point.
I think that's pretty neat but lava stone is a very particular type of stone with particular properties, suited for specific applications, where as the typical stone you will see in masonry and building materials is not renewable.
That's a non-sequitur. Stone is not considered a renewable resource, which is typically defined as a resource which naturally replenishes itself over time at a meaningful rate compared to the rate of consumption.
My point is that "renewable resource" is a fairly meaningless term when applied to stone. Sure, we technically have a finite amount of it on the planet, but we also can't possibly use it all up. Not unless we have technology that would allow us to travel outside the solar system, at which point the limited amount of stone is also moot.
Sure, it doesn't fit the definition, but there is also no reason to care that it doesn't.
It's my assumption based on the fact that we continually mine new portions of the earth over time. Trees and other life exist within regenerative chemical cycles, whereas rock formation is a physical process that consumes some limited supply of material on Earth. I would love to know more about this as well, if you come across any resources.
We have concrete buildings going back to Greek and Roman times, mostly standing.
Wooden buildings have a very finite lifespan, and, aside from earthquakes, much less so in a disaster. A wooden city and a steel/brick/concrete city react very differently to firebombing.
Especially with declining populations, it makes sense to build structures to last. The old school brick/concrete/stone/... European buildings from 1500 are largely in good shape, at least where they weren't demolished by war.
Traditional European construction is also much more friendly for heating / cooling. The thermal capacity of stone-based materials helps a lot.
To me, it feels a bit like Germany banning nuclear power plants, and switching to Russian fossil fuels instead...
Drop a Google Streetview in the middle on downtown classical Gothenberg, and try to find a wood construction building. Sweden is about as northern Europe as it gets. Head over to Amsterdam, and it will look pretty similar.
It will be relatively similar to most other major European cities; solid masonry construction has historically been the norm.
You'll find some wooden houses in smaller towns and rural areas, but even there, if you head over to e.g. Poland, most things will be solid masonry. And the wooden construction is mostly relatively new; what you'll rarely find is old wooden construction.
I live in the northern part of Central Europe and have spent over a decade travelling through these countries. Ive worked with log and timber frame construction and have a solid understanding of traditional and modern building methods. I know how buildings are actually made, not just how they look on googles street view...
In Sweden around 80% of standing homes are wooden. About 90% of new single-family homes are timber construction. Gothenburg is an outlier because of 19th-century laws that limited wooden buildings to two storeys, which is why you get the Landshövdingehus with a brick base and wooden upper floors.
The Netherlands is western Europe, not northern or central. That’s basic geography...
Timber is the dominant material in residential construction across Sweden, Finland, Norway, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. Denmark is more mixed, and Poland leans more towards masonry, but the south has a strong timber tradition, especially in the Tatra region.
And even in places like Germany or Denmark where it looks like brick, it's often just a clinker façade over a timber or frame structure. It’s aesthetic, not structural.
Honestly, it's laughable to compare the dense inner city to the massive volume of buildings outside it. You're looking at a fraction and pretending it's the whole. It’s just not serious.
Wood buildings can and have stood for hundreds of years, I'm in one right now. The ROI has been met after a few decades regardless of the material... at this point it becomes more economical to transport lighter materials that are easier to work with. Wood is also better for carbon storage as long as we're sourcing it sustainably. Concrete is one of the most carbon-intense materials out there.
What is "very finite" here? Where I grew up there are wood houses/barns/structures made entirely out of wood and still standing/being used after hundreds of years. Is that not enough?
Maybe you need to get out more? In France (where I assume you live) new public buildings are mandated to be at least 50% wood or other bio-based renewables. Also ~5% (and increasing) of new domestic builds are timber framed.