The Compact Wooden City: A Life-Cycle Analysis of How Timber Could Help Combat Climate Change

La ville en bois : comment les matériaux biosourcés peuvent-ils lutter contre le changement climatique (analyse du cycle de vie)

Nowadays the main building materials used in the construction industry are concrete, steel and timber. From the point of view of ecological sustainability, there are four important differences between these three materials: first, timber is the only material of the three that is renewable; second, timber needs only a small amount of energy to be extracted and recycled compared to steel and concrete (but the implementation of its potential is not as developed yet); third, timber does not produce waste by the end of its life since it can be reused many times in several products before decomposing or being used as fuel and; and fourth, timber traps huge amounts of carbon from the atmosphere – a tree can contain a ton of CO2 [1] – and the carbon absorbed remains embedded as long as the wood is in use.

Considering the fact that 36 percent of total carbon emissions in Europe during the last decade came from the building industry,[2] as well as 39 percent of total carbon emissions in the United States,[3] the materiality of construction should be a priority for governments’ regulations in the future as measurements against global warming. The amount of CO2 in the atmosphere and the level of carbon emissions of the big economies across the globe are big issues that need to be solved with urgency in order to avoid larger, more frequent climate catastrophes in the future.

^{1-Mayo, J. (2015). Solid Wood: Case Studies in Mass Timber Architecture, Technology and Design. New York: Routledge, p. 9.}
^{2-European Commission for Research and Innovation (2016). Challenges Ahead. Retrieved from: http://ec.europa.eu/research/industrial_technologies/eeb-challenges-ahead_en.html}

The Compact Wooden City: A Life-Cycle Analysis of How Timber Could Help Combat Climate Change

The Compact Wooden City: A Life-Cycle Analysis of How Timber Could Help Combat Climate Change

Partagez ces informations