More Timber in Construction: Unanswered Questions and Future Challenges
REBEL—Resource Efficient Built Environment Lab, School of Engineering and the Built Environment, Edinburgh Napier University, 10 Colinton Road, Edinburgh EH10 5DT, UK
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Sustainability 2020, 12(8), 3473; https://doi.org/10.3390/su12083473
Received: 6 April 2020 / Revised: 15 April 2020 / Accepted: 21 April 2020 / Published: 24 April 2020
(This article belongs to the Section Sustainable Urban and Rural Development)
The built environment is one of the greatest contributors to carbon emissions, climate change, and to the unsustainable pressure on the natural environment and its ecosystems. The use of more timber in construction is one possible response, and an authoritative contribution to this growing movement comes from the UK’s Committee on Climate Change, which identifies a “substantial increase in the use of wood in the construction of buildings” as a top priority. However, a global encouragement of such a strategy raises some difficult questions. Given the urgency of effective solutions for low-carbon built environments, and the likely continued growth in demand for timber in construction, this article reviews its sustainability and identifies future challenges and unanswered questions. Existing evidence points indeed towards timber as the lower carbon option when modelled through life cycle assessment without having to draw on arguments around carbon storage. Issues however remain on the timing of carbon emissions, land allocation, and the environmental loads and benefits associated with the end-of-life options: analysis of environmental product declarations for engineered timber suggests that landfill might either be the best or the worst option from a climate change perspective, depending on assumptions.
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Keywords:
structural and engineered timber; life cycle assessment; harvested wood products; carbon storage; built environment; climate change mitigation
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MDPI and ACS Style
Hart, J.; Pomponi, F. More Timber in Construction: Unanswered Questions and Future Challenges. Sustainability 2020, 12, 3473. https://doi.org/10.3390/su12083473
AMA Style
Hart J, Pomponi F. More Timber in Construction: Unanswered Questions and Future Challenges. Sustainability. 2020; 12(8):3473. https://doi.org/10.3390/su12083473
Chicago/Turabian StyleHart, Jim, and Francesco Pomponi. 2020. "More Timber in Construction: Unanswered Questions and Future Challenges" Sustainability 12, no. 8: 3473. https://doi.org/10.3390/su12083473
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