Six Predictions for 2025 in the Hemp Building Industry
Twelve new tip-up hempcrete duplexes at Hillside Center for Sustainable Living in Newburyport, MA. Photo courtesy of Sadie Woodward
Six Predictions for 2025 in the Hemp Building Industry
By Jean Lotus
We’re sticking out our neck at HempBuild Mag and trying to predict what will happen in the wonderful and confusing hemp building industry in the new year. We are well aware that predictions are like opinions which are also like sphincters – everyone’s got one and it’s terrible when they’re constricted and paralyzed. So, we offer our observations, some good and some bad, but all tinged with optimistic hope for the future – knowing full well that they may be wrong and that exciting and unforeseen events may change things.
Hemp building company founders pose at GreenBuild Expo 2024 in Philadelphia at the Goodness of Hemp Pavilion, organized by IND HEMP and HEMI.
Prediction 1: Hemp Building Materials will Crack into Mainstream Architecture and Design
We are super excited by the new interest in biobased materials from decisionmakers in the commercial and institutional architecture and design world. At GreenBuild Expo in Philadelphia this year, the Carbon-Storing Materials and the Goodness of Hemp (featuring 12 hemp building companies) pavilions generated the most visitors, according to this eyewitness.
Additionally, members of the new Biobased Materials Collective – which started with 60 members and has grown to around 350+ commercial architects and academics – are looking for projects to specify natural building materials. Regenerative hemp is a clear winner.
Resources like Tim Callahan’s new architectural details book and hempcrete house plans will enter the market allowing faster, more streamlined projects.
Hempcrete villa under construction at the Kosmos Stargazing Resort in Colorado's San Luis Valley. Photo courtesy of Kosmos instagram
Prediction 2: Bigger, Better Hempcrete Projects in Store for USA
Visionaries in the US are realizing that we can match the grand projects undertaken by hemp builders in the EU. Especially since hemp-lime appeared for the first time last year in the 2024 International Residential Codes. There’s no damn reason we can’t build big multi-unit housing and luxury ecotourism here with hempcrete.
One sign of proof was the RMI HomebuildersCAN case study that featured the hempcrete apartment projects at Hillside Center for Sustainable Living. The year 2025 will be the year that subdivisions in Texas and off-grid ecovillages bear fruit. We predict in 2025, hemp block technology will make strides – first imported and eventually manufactured domestically.
US Department of Energy has granted millions to hemp building technology companies and organizations, but much of that money has not been released.
Prediction 3: Political Change will Affect Federal Funding
This one’s not so optimistic. We predict the year 2025 will be a year of changing federal priorities with the new Trump administration and a pro-petroleum anti-green backlash. This is a drag, because even though promises of federal funding for hemp building have been forthcoming in 2024, grantees are asking, “Where is the money?” We’re hearing that the Department of Energy and the EPA – two agencies which appear to be targeted by the upcoming regime change – are slow to pay out and they’re clearly running out of time. Nevertheless, we celebrate the wins of Hempitecture; the Hemp Building Institute; the Lower Sioux; Indigenous Habitat Institute; Sativa Building Systems; Americhanvre and others. However, states and municipalities are adopting their own embodied carbon reduction strategies, so there may be more localized funding opportunities. We predict under-the-wire last-minute payouts for these companies and an industry-wide change of focus to regional and state granting agencies.
11th International Hemp Symposium participants gaze at the hempcrete facade on the townhall building in Voorst, Netherlands, designed by De Twee Snoeken Architects and completed in 2023. Photo by Dermot Moore
Prediction 4: International Cooperation will Help Build the Industry
As the United States moves forward with the decriminalization and reinvention of industrial hemp, other countries are following suit. International cooperation in Japan, Malaysia, Thailand, Africa, Latin America, the Netherlands, Australia, France, Sweden and Germany will continue to boost the global industry in 2025.
Prediction 5: Indigenous Leadership will Inspire the Hemp Industry
The U.S. hemp building industry will look to tribal hemp companies for inspiration and leadership. Tribes have already begun to lead the way in the hemp industry throughout the supply chain including at the very top with financing. In 2024, the Southern Ute Tribe of Colorado provided venture capital for the Wichita Falls TX-based processing startup Panda Biotech. Additionally, in 2025 hempcrete will capture the imagination of more US home buyers. Patagonia’s breakthrough short film “Green Buffalo”,released in 2024, brings the Lower Sioux tribe’s housing successes to a wider audience. Members of other tribes, like the Rosebud Sioux, Anishinaabe and Oglala Sioux Pine Ridge and the Indigenous Habitat Institute are also leading the green building revolution. We predict more hemp housing on tribal lands in 2025.
Hempcrete home owner and designer Aliyah Field poses in the window of her newly hemped home outside La Veta, CO. Photo by Jean Lotus
Prediction 6: Hemp-lime’s superior performance in climate resilience, fire resistance and carbon storage will help break into the construction market and lower costs.
In 2024, Asheville NC – the town with the most hempcrete homes built in the USA – was savagely attacked by Hurricane Helene. The locations, design and natural materials of these hempcrete homes helped them survive driving rains and wind. In Florida’s hurricane zones, Hempitecture’s hemp batt insulation used by Onx Homes adds climate resilience. In Colorado’s wildfire zones, hempcrete is the choice for homeowners seeking protection from fires. New breakthroughs in ASTM hemp measurement standards and a new USDA hemp checkoff program, The Goodness of Hemp will help make hemp hurd consistent in 2025 for faster adoption by the construction industry.
Additionally, new carbon sink programs for low-CO2 construction will help bring the price down for hemp-lime construction. We predict at least 10 hempcrete buildings will qualify in the USA for a carbon sink rebate in 2025.
These are our predictions for 2025. Meanwhile, owner-builder visionaries will continue to build hemp lime homes in the USA like the ones we’ve covered last year in Maui, Austin, TX, Vermont, Minnesota, Georgia, Menard, TX. La Veda, CO and more!
Got some predictions for 2025? We’d love to hear them in the comments.
Jean Lotus, Editor HempBuild Magazine
Owners Bruce Woodside and Bronwyn Barry pose in front of their Paonia, CO hempcrete home completed in 2024. Photo courtesy of Bronwyn Barry
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