By Gary Newman, Chief Executive, Woodknowledge Wales

The conversation around regenerative materials is changing. We are no longer asking “Can we build with regenerative materials?”, but “How can we create the market conditions that allow us to do it at scale?”

Regenerative materials are natural, renewable materials that, when responsibly managed, can be replenished without depleting the systems they come from. But they are more than just sustainable alternatives: they have the potential to deliver net-positive benefits for the ecosystems and economies around them. Championing their use presents an opportunity to move beyond simply reducing construction’s impact towards creating a built environment that gives back.

Creating the conditions for regenerative materials to become mainstream choices requires change across the market. Promisingly, we are seeing signals of positive change in four key areas: supply, demand, procurement and finance.

Supply

When it comes to supply, the priority should not simply be to produce more regenerative materials, but to make better use of the materials we already have available and ensure that new materials are produced in the best possible way.

Materials mapping plays an important role here. By understanding what materials are available, where they are and how they currently move, we can identify opportunities to keep resources in use rather than extracting new ones. Regenerative materials hubs, like Tipping Points East, can turn this mapping into action. They connect available materials with potential users, creating new opportunities for resources that might otherwise be overlooked or treated as waste.

Where new materials are needed, we need to think more carefully about what we produce, where we produce it and how. Selecting species and crops suited to local conditions, resilient to climate change and capable of delivering future ecosystem needs can strengthen supply. Equally, approaches such as farm woodlands and agroforestry can combine productive land use with environmental benefits and long-term income generation.

The emerging opportunity here is an improved supply chain: one that can identify and mobilise existing resources, support better land-use decisions and provide the materials we will need in the future.

Demand

Demand is changing too. We are seeing encouraging signs of a market capable of the scale and consistency needed to support regenerative materials.

The public sector is leading this change. Large, long-term public programmes can give regenerative materials a viable route into the mainstream. The Department for Education’s £33 million Regenerative Schools programme, for example, is developing 6 standardised ultra-low-carbon school designs using bio-based materials and nature-led approaches, with the potential to replicate them throughout the education estate. Sustained demand like this can give suppliers the confidence to invest and scale.

Standardisation is the key to making this expansion possible. Repeatable designs make construction faster and more efficient, all while reducing waste and allowing flexibility in material choice. Tai ar y Cyd (Homes Together) shows what this can look like in practice: 25 social landlords, covering 11 Welsh councils and 14 housing associations, co-developed a Pattern Book and Design Guide covering 15 house types and 18 variants for timber-based, offsite-manufactured affordable homes, with 8 members now bringing forward prototype sites.

This growing demand creates the opportunity for procurement to go beyond responding to the market, allowing demand to turn into action.

Procurement

Procurement is where ambition either stalls or becomes action. Traditional processes often favour established specifications and familiar supply chains, making it harder for emerging regenerative materials and suppliers to compete.

But procurement can also actively shape the market. ROOT to Market, launched in May 2026, puts this approach into practice. It offers a dynamic marketplace that connects clients and contractors with regenerative and low-carbon material suppliers, without excluding suppliers who do not already meet conventional procurement requirements. Instead, it builds capacity through training and support, opening the market to SMEs and regional producers, all while giving clients greater visibility of what is available.

This approach matters. Procurement becomes more than a purchasing mechanism; it creates the market signals needed to strengthen both supply and demand, shifting what the market considers standard.

Finance

Construction is usually framed as a source of emissions, but regenerative materials offer the possibility of making buildings part of the solution by storing carbon. In the UK, emerging certification approaches are beginning to quantify the carbon stored in buildings, signalling a growing recognition of its potential value. Meanwhile, the EU is taking this further, developing a methodology to measure and potentially credit biogenic carbon stored in buildings, expected by the end of 2026.

Putting a financial value on stored carbon could create additional incentives to build with regenerative materials, beyond reducing embodied emissions. For buyers, purchasing verified stored carbon could provide a credible way to support carbon removal while driving demand for lower-carbon construction. For building owners and suppliers, recognising this value could create an additional income stream and strengthen the business case for investing in regenerative materials.

Is finance the missing puzzle piece in the regenerative materials movement?

Conclusion

The movement towards regenerative materials is no longer about whether we can build differently, but whether we can create the market to build with them at scale. Promisingly, we are seeing the emergence of a new system where these four key levers reinforce one another. Stronger supply enables greater demand, consistent demand gives the procurement process greater influence and monetising stored carbon creates new value across the system. Hopefully, we will soon see regenerative materials transform from a promising alternative to a commonplace part of how we build.