Letter from Chairman & CEO

Dear AWC Members and Friends

This past year marked significant wins for our industry. Together, we focused our efforts on AWC’s core competencies and advanced policy, education, codes, and standards that strengthened markets, safeguarded material choice, and positioned wood products as key solutions to housing affordability and sustainability.

At the federal policy level, we helped secure the permanent and expanded Low-Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC), a major milestone that will support increased access to affordable housing, encourage housing starts, and ultimately lead to increased demand for wood products. We also advanced regulatory reforms grounded in the best available science, including progress on permitting modernization and formaldehyde risk evaluation, reducing uncertainty for manufacturers.

We released updated environmental product declarations (EPD) to round out the suite of industry EPDs, answering the call from the market for more transparency and further strengthening our position as the most sustainable building product on the market. AWC was also instrumental in the completion of ISO 13391, which is a critical standard that has the potential to serve as an alternative to the Greenhouse Gas Protocol’s organizational reporting.

In codes development, AWC continued to navigate thousands of public comments and multiple hearings in the 2027 I-Codes process, securing key wins that protect safe, cost-effective wood construction and ensure fair treatment across competing material interests.

The standards team also made strong contributions that shaped wind and seismic standards by demonstrating the performance-tested resiliency of wood products, while also keeping AWC’s essential ANSI design standard references on track for the 2027 I-Codes.

In addition to these wins, targeted education and outreach throughout the year increased the understanding of AWC’s core ANSI building standards, mass timber and construction fire safety, equipping building and code officials and fire departments across the nations with the resources they need for safe construction.

Our industry’s story remains a compelling one – we manufacture a renewable product that is critical to solving the housing crisis, supports rural economies and protects the long-term health of our forests.

As we look to 2026, we are well-positioned to continue to support safety and market access in building codes and standards, advocate for reasonable regulation, advance data-driven, science-based sustainability policies, and expand opportunities for wood across the built environment.

Thank you for your continued support of AWC and its mission!

Sean McLaren
President & CEO, West Fraser
AWC Chairman of the Board

Jackson Morrill
President & CEO
American Wood Council