Wood-based building materials and atmospheric carbon emissions

Abstract This study investigates the global impact of wood as a building material by considering emissions of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. Wood is compared with other materials in terms of stored carbon and emissions of carbon dioxide from fossil fuel energy used in manufacturing. An analysis of typical forms of building construction shows that wood buildings require much lower process energy and result in lower carbon emissions than buildings of other materials such as brick, aluminium, steel and concrete. If a shift is made towards greater use of wood in buildings, the low fossil fuel requirement for manufacturing wood compared with other materials is much more significant in the long term than the carbon stored in the wood building products. As a corollary, a shift from wood to non-wood materials would result in an increase in energy requirements and carbon emissions. The results presented in this paper show that a 17% increase in wood usage in the New Zealand building industry could result in a 20% reduction in carbon emissions from the manufacture of all building materials, being a reduction of about 1.5% of New Zealand’s total emissions. The reduction in emissions is mainly a result of using wood in place of brick and aluminium, and to a lesser extent steel and concrete, all of which require much more process energy than wood. There would be a corresponding decrease of about 1.5% in total national fossil fuel consumption. These figures have implications for the global forestry and building industries. Any increases in wood use must be accompanied by corresponding increases in areas of forest being managed for long term sustained yield production.