There is a clear need for enhanced contribution of the forest-based sector to decarbonisation strategies for buildings, both in terms of operational emissions, embodied emissions, and carbon removals. Global wood demand will double from 2010 to 2030, necessitating sustainable timber strategies beyond virgin wood. When it comes to wood products, the wood construction industry is mono-cultural and hardly considers end-of-life potential for timber products. Its reliance on a few tree species and low tolerance for defects, geometric variability, and small diameters, leads to under-utilization of the available resources. However, the amount of available underutilised wood (hardwoods, post-consumer, low-quality and damage wood) in the forest and building stock in the EU is not clear (Nasiri et al. 2023). In addition, while harvested wood products (HWP) accounting is obligatory in the EU, it has low granularity, is not aligned between countries and does not allow to take into account post-consumer wood. Furthermore, while the use of timber contributes to carbon removal, current tools do not include temporal aspects of carbon storage or are too complex to be used in practice (Cordier et al. 2022). There is a need for an accessible and transparent dynamic Life Cycle Analysis (d-LCA) method that analyses circular practices, based on available wood flows. There is an over-reliance on mass timber products, while less material-intensive designs are possible. Also, the use of glues in engineered wood products adds to the problem of recovery (Hart and Pomponi 2020). The design of wood construction products is primarily targeted towards new buildings, lacking effective solutions to increase the capacity of the existing building stock or to accelerate the European Renovation Wave.
Keywords: circular, zero-waste, underutilised wood resources, material flow analysis, dynamic LCA, carbon storage, Living Labs, NEB
Authors
Liselotte De Ligne
Laboratory of Wood Technology, Ghent University, Belgium
Joris Van Acker
Laboratory of Wood Technology, Ghent University, Belgium
Tom Anthonis
Laboratory of Wood Technology, Ghent University, Belgium
Jan Van den Bulcke
Laboratory of Wood Technology, Ghent University, Belgium
WoodStock consortium
https://www.woodstockproject.eu
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