Environmental Impact of a Mass Timber Building—A Case Study

Abstract

The study focuses on a life cycle assessment of a wood-based residential building and evaluates the magnitude of individual construction components—foundations, flooring, peripheral wall, inner walls, ceiling, roof, windows, and doors—in terms of climate change; acidification; eutrophication; photochemical oxidation; depletion of abiotic elements and fossil fuels; and water scarcity categories within the system boundaries of the Product stage of the life cycle. The assessment was done using the SimaPro software and the ecoinvent database. The results pointed at the advantages of mass timber as a construction material and highlighted the significance in the type of insulation used. Foundations were found to bear the highest share of impact on photochemical oxidation reaching nearly 30% and depletion of fossil fuels accounting for about 25% of that impact. Peripheral wall was ranked the worst in terms of impact on acidification and eutrophication (more than 25% of both), depletion of elements (responsible for 50% of that impact), and had about 60% impact on water scarcity. After adding up carbon emissions and removals, the embodied impact of the whole construction on climate change was detected to be 8185.19 kg CO2 eq emissions which corresponded with 57.08 kg CO2 eq/m2 of gross internal area. A negative carbon composition of the construction was also set.

Strategies for connecting whole-building LCA to the low-carbon design process

“…It is important to note that early LCAs may be less accurate as they are limited to predictive estimates, since design details material selections are subject to significant change as various disciplines work together on a design. Another strategy for LCA and by far the most common is including a full analysis after design completion (table 1-'Design completion') as a post-design calculation report or conclusion [22][23][24][25][26][27]. Recent literature review of LCA in design revealed that most LCAs are reactive (after design completion), but that proactive methods have better potential to effect actual change, a factor acknowledged by those innovating in LCA capabilities for early design [34][35][36].…”

Analysis and Calculation of Stability Coefficients of Cross-Laminated Timber Axial Compression Member

“…When compared with concrete constructions, CLT constructions have a lower thermal conductivity coefficient with the same thickness [ 5 , 6 ]. In addition, there are some other advantages of CLT construction including faster on-site construction times, lighter weight materials, use of a sustainable natural resource, carbon sequestration, lower embodied energy, and lower greenhouse gas emissions [ 7 , 8 , 9 ]. For these reasons, CLT elements have been successfully used in multi-storey timber-based structures.…”