Timber HP by GO Lab - Wood Fiber Insulation
Building insulation in North America is an $11 billion industry dominated by non-renewable, non-recyclable products derived from fossil fuels. Over the past 20 years, despite the development of many new building technologies to reduce energy consumption, there has been almost no innovation in new insulation products. At OPAL’s sister company, Timber HP, we plan to change that.
Co-founded by OPAL executive partner Matthew O’Malia and materials scientist Joshua Henry, GO Lab is a clean-tech company building out its manufacturing facility for the next generation of insulation products that are renewable, recyclable, and carbon sequestering, located at the former paper mill in Madison, Maine. Insulation made from wood fiber has been on the market in Europe for 20 years, but we will be the first domestic producer of wood fiber insulation, using a waste material from the lumber industry to produce cost-competitive replacements for the plastic foam and fiberglass products that currently claim the lion’s share of the U.S. insulation industry.
A Historic Opportunity
Buildings account for approximately 39 percent of all CO₂ emissions globally, exceeding both the industrial and transportation sectors. By 2060, new construction and major renovation is projected to double the building floor area that currently exists on the planet, to 230 billion square meters—the equivalent of building an entire New York City every month for the next 40 years.
Recognizing the outsize role buildings play in causing—and potentially addressing—the climate crisis, states and municipalities are adopting and enforcing tough new building codes that require higher levels of energy efficiency. These tougher regulations will reduce buildings’ operational carbon emissions. However, they do not address the enormous carbon footprint—the carbon emitted during production and transportation, or embodied carbon—of the insulation products that make up 90 percent of the U.S. market. Foam is made from chemicals derived from fossil fuels. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, fiberglass manufacturing is among the most energy-intensive industries in the U.S. Both foam and fiberglass are also toxic and non- biodegradable.
Wood fiber insulation, in contrast, is renewable, recyclable, safe to handle and nontoxic. Most importantly, because it sequesters carbon—with the potential to actually capture and store more carbon than is emitted in its production—wood fiber insulation can play a key role in improving building sustainability by reducing both operational carbon emissions and embodied carbon.
Our Products
Timber HP’s suite of insulation products will address every above-grade application in a building, including board insulation for continuous exterior use, batt insulation for wall cavities, and loose-fill insulation for attics and irregular spaces.
Timber Board is a weather-resistant, rigid insulating board intended for use as a continuous exterior insulation between sheathing and siding. Its compressive strength allows façade systems to be installed directly over it and fastened through it to the sheathing layer. Its moisture and mold resistance permit exposure to the environment for up to three months during construction. From a building science standpoint, Timber Board has two major advantages: vapor permeability, which is essential in managing moisture in building assemblies and ensuring the durability of the building envelope, and recyclability.
Timber Batt is a direct replacement for fiberglass and mineral wool batts as wall cavity insulation. Unlike these conventional products, wood fiber batts are easy to handle and offer the advantage of press-fit installation. Due to the density of wood fiber, Timber batt has a very good sound-attenuation rating, comparable with that of mineral wool. In addition to ease of use, wood fiber batts are comfortable to handle and install, without the skin and respiratory irritation associated with existing products on the market.
Timber Fill, our loose-fill wood fiber offering, is a direct replacement for cellulose insulation, which consists of recycled newspaper. Cellulose shares many of wood fiber’s advantages, but due to declining demand for print media, its availability has become irregular, creating an opening in the market that Timber Fill is poised to fill more reliably.
Timber HP’s wood fiber insulation products will enter the market in New England in 2023, with plans to expand production across the U.S. and Canada.
The decision to establish a beachhead in the Northeast positions the company for a strong launch and successful long-term growth. Maine has the largest forest products economy in the region and a fully functioning supply chain. Additionally, buildings in the cold Northeast climate zone require as much as twice the amount of insulation as those in other parts of the U.S.
We look forward with great optimism to marketing our domestic line of sustainable wood fiber products as a cost-effective, high-performance alternative to fossil fuel-based insulation products. Leveraging Maine’s underutilized resources, this new technology has the potential to reach scale rapidly, revitalize an imperiled industry, and accelerate the necessary and historic shift to energy efficient, healthy, carbon-positive buildings nationwide.
