At this year’s Greenbuild Conference and Expo, held Nov. 4–7 in Los Angeles, bio-based building materials took the spotlight — both on the show floor and in one of the conference’s most crowded sessions.

At the 2025 Rocky Mountain Natural Building Conference in Bozeman, Montana, last week, three leaders in hemp-based construction shared their perspectives on the material’s future: Greg Wilson of HempWood, Matt Marino of Homeland Hempcrete, and architect April Magill of Root Down Building Collective. (Full disclosure: I serve as executive director of the conference hosts, the Colorado-based Natural Building Alliance.)

Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) was the special guest at the opening of a second factory on the HempWood campus in Murray, KY on Aug. 5.

Hemp building materials will take a prominent place at the Rocky Mountain Natural Building Conference Bozeman Sept. 18-20. Hemp will take the podium along with cob, straw bale, passive house, natural plaster and other natural building technologies, at the Colorado-based Natural Building Alliance's biennial conference held since 2003.

Multiple US hemp-building companies will make a big splash for around 25,000 visitors at one of the largest US construction sustainability expos and conferences later this month in Philadelphia, thanks to collaboration and the generosity of a hemp processing company and a hemp-building non-profit.

New laws regarding the legalization of hemp in Japan, and new coalitions with Thailand, are opening up possibilities for the hemp industry for medicinal and industrial uses in both Asian countries.

A Colorado startup modular home company unveiled a prototype last month that features HempWool batt insulation.

If hemp building products can shave off just a sliver of the annual $2.7 trillion U.S. building industry revenue, the industry can be brought to profitability and prices can lower to match those of conventional construction materials, advocates believe. 

Hemp-based construction companies have been knocking on the door of events like San Francisco’s Greenbuild Expo for years. But this year, three companies presented their products and networked with the many designers, builders, architects, engineers and city officials attending.

We’d like to introduce you to three new hempcrete builds in Texas, Colorado and Michigan. All three projects began, or were completed, in 2022 and the builders/subcontractors are already starting new projects.

The small-but-mighty US Hemp Building Association has had an outsized impact on the emerging hemp building industry in the United States after only three years in existence.

Hemp construction techniques for hemp insulation using spray, block and cast-in-place will be discussed by international and U.S. experts in Denver at the NoCo8 Hemp Expo in March, organizers announced.

Attendees at the U.S. Hemp Building Summit in Austin, Texas, last month got a sneak peek of some of the new products and services in the works in the hemp building and construction world for 2022.

What if you didn’t have to wait 80+ years for an oak tree to grow large enough to be felled? A new innovation in the emerging hemp industry seeks to replace traditional hardwood with a woody product that grows in just a few months.