Regional environmental life cycle consequences of material substitutions: The case of increasing wood structures for non-residential buildings

Cordier, Sylvain; Robichaud, François; Blanchet, Pierre; Amor, Ben

doi:10.1016/j.jclepro.2021.129671

Cited by 29 publications

(16 citation statements)

References 21 publications

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“…Meeting the same function among non-wood and woodbased products often requires varying mass amounts of each. For construction materials, this can result in substantially different mass replacement ratios (in the following also called replacement rates) (Cordier et al 2021), e.g., depending on the building type (Peñaloza et al 2019), or physical properties such as density or the thermal conductivity (Schulte et al 2021a). Given the variety of construction materials covered in this study, mass replacement rates according to multiple materials were adapted from Peñaloza et al (2016), Mehr et al (2018), and Piccardo and Gustavsson (2021) (Supplementary Material).…”

Section: Substitution Effectsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Given the variety of construction materials covered in this study, mass replacement rates according to multiple materials were adapted from Peñaloza et al (2016), Mehr et al (2018), and Piccardo and Gustavsson (2021) (Supplementary Material). Sawnwood used in timber light frame, CLT, and glulam timber frame multistorey residential buildings was assumed to substitute for concrete and steel (Cordier et al 2021), and plywood and fibreboards replaced gypsum boards, plaster, and mineral insulation materials.…”

Section: Substitution Effectsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Nordic forest management towards climate change mitigation: time dynamic temperature change impacts of wood product systems including substitution effects

et al. 2022

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Climate change mitigation trade-offs between increasing harvests to exploit substitution effects versus accumulating forest carbon sequestration complicate recommendations for climate beneficial forest management. Here, a time dynamic assessment ascertains climate change mitigation potential from different rotation forest management alternatives across three Swedish regions integrating the forest decision support system Heureka RegWise with a wood product model using life cycle assessment data. The objective is to increase understanding on the climate effects of varying the forest management. Across all regions, prolonging rotations by 20% leads on average to the largest additional net climate benefit until 2050 in both, saved emissions and temperature cooling, while decreasing harvests by 20% leads to the cumulatively largest net climate benefits past 2050. In contrast, increasing harvests or decreasing the rotation period accordingly provokes temporally alternating net emissions, or slight net emission, respectively, regardless of a changing market displacement factor. However, future forest calamities might compromise potential additional temperature cooling from forests, while substitution effects, despite probable prospective decreases, require additional thorough and time explicit assessments, to provide more robust policy consultation.

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Section: Substitution Effectsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Substitution Effectsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Nordic forest management towards climate change mitigation: time dynamic temperature change impacts of wood product systems including substitution effects

et al. 2022

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“…Typical inter-material comparative LCAs compare the embodied emission of equivalent volumes of materials, discarding the variability of the volumes required to perform the same function from one material to another and thus introducing significant sources of uncertainty in the results. Recent studies of the Canadian building industry have underlined the necessity to develop functional units from substitution factors developed at regional scales to increase the robustness of comparative LCAs and guide actors of the building sector towards environmentally coherent material selections in the early stages of design (Cordier et al 2021). This section shows how the embodied carbon emissions of material volumes with equivalent thermal performance could be compared on a per capita basis to allow fair material comparisons.…”

Section: Embodied Carbonmentioning

confidence: 99%

Internal thermal mass for passive cooling and ventilation: adaptive comfort limits, ideal quantities, embodied carbon

Toldi

Craig

Sushama

2022

Buildings and Cities

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How effective is naturally ventilated internal thermal mass for obviating air-conditioning, mitigating heatwaves and storing carbon in buildings? This study combines detailed climate model outputs with scaling rules for optimizing internal thermal mass coupled with buoyancy ventilation. It identifies regions where this passive design strategy is most effective during future heatwaves and determines how much internal thermal mass each person needs to stay comfortable in these regions, with a special focus on Canada. Results suggest that naturally ventilated internal thermal mass is likely to become less effective due to future global heating. Regions where internal thermal mass will no longer be sufficient to obviate air-conditioning and where it can still play a significant role in hybrid cooling are identified. By comparing the ideal per capita thermal mass quantities in different regions, it is found that biomass-based materials require approximately 3.5 times the volume of cementitious materials to perform equivalently, if thermal proportions for surface area and thickness are respected. Finally, an analysis of the per capita embodied carbon of these ideal internal thermal mass quantities is undertaken, suggesting a fair functional unit to compare thermal mass materials.

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“…With the growing number of regulations, strategies and programs addressing climate change, the demand for forest-based products is expected to rise as they are considered sustainable, renewable and good contenders to replace many fossil-fuel-based products [25,26]. Although some initiatives falling under the umbrella of circular economy are found to be inefficient solutions for climate change mitigation [1,27], recent studies highlight the potential of certain forest products to effectively achieve reductions in carbon emissions [28][29][30]. Wood fibres can be used to produce bioplastics, advanced biomaterials, resins, electricity, heat, and fuel that substitute more carbon intensive alternatives-all while responding to traditional demand for lumber and the pulp and paper industries.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Forest Products and Circular Economy Strategies: A Canadian Perspective

et al. 2022

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The Government of Canada has embraced circular economy and is supporting an increasing number of initiatives in the field. However, implementation examples remain scattered and certain stakeholders are eager to see a greater level of commitment from policy makers. The purpose of this study is to provide a Canadian perspective on how, and to what extent, forest products are compatible with circular economy strategies. This topic was investigated through interviews with 16 Canadian experts in eco-design, circular economy, forest products and/or waste management, with a focus on construction and packaging. Efforts made by forest industries at the manufacturing stage to reduce resource consumption were acknowledged, but the implementation of other circular economy strategies, such as reuse, recycling and energy recovery, is uneven. While there is low-hanging fruit for incremental improvements, such as the processing of recovered lumber in wood panels and not mixing cardboard fibres with other paper streams to avoid downcycling, several barriers to the widespread adoption of the most promising strategies were identified. The experts consulted proposed several solutions to accelerate the deployment of circular economy strategies for forest products, for which government interventions would need to be tailored to the different policy readiness levels (PRLs) observed in the construction and packaging sectors. With circularity having economy-wide implications, setting a clear policy direction at the national level, with a circular economy roadmap for Canada for example, could accelerate coordinated implementation within and across sectors, including forest industries.

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Regional environmental life cycle consequences of material substitutions: The case of increasing wood structures for non-residential buildings

Cited by 29 publications

References 21 publications

Nordic forest management towards climate change mitigation: time dynamic temperature change impacts of wood product systems including substitution effects

Nordic forest management towards climate change mitigation: time dynamic temperature change impacts of wood product systems including substitution effects

Internal thermal mass for passive cooling and ventilation: adaptive comfort limits, ideal quantities, embodied carbon

Forest Products and Circular Economy Strategies: A Canadian Perspective

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