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I wonder how much energy this consumes compared to traditional wood equivalents?

Land use at least is much more efficient when harvests are every 4-5 years instead of every 40-80 years with spruce or fir. Birch can be felled at around 55 years.

Normal wood is kiln dried similarly to bamboo, and glued panels are done in a similar fashion.

Plywood is in a way more processed than bamboo.

We could do the same process with fast growing bush-form softwoods like poplar or willow that regenerate from roots.

In fact a stand of young poplars doesn't look too dissimilar from a bamboo grove; lots of narrow straight trees.

I cut two dying poplars on my property a few years ago and there's now a stand of dozens of 4" diameter smaller trees, sprouted out from the root system.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coppicing

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