A Big Boost to Engineered Lumber Use Construction Could Reduce Global Carbon

With ESG remaining a big topic in real estate, with an emphasis on reporting about its carbon footprint, some researchers in the publication Nature Communications noted how going big on engineered wood could help reduce global numbers.

“We show that if 90% of the new urban population would be housed in newly built urban mid-rise buildings with wooden constructions, 106 Gt of additional CO2 could be saved by 2100. Forest plantations would need to expand by up to 149 Mha by 2100 and harvests from unprotected natural forests would increase,” the study said.

A look at the numbers, though, point out how difficult that would be. With a current 50% of the global population living in cities, they worked with two potential projections: one in which 58% would live in cities by 2100 and other in which 92% would. “By the middle of this century, the newly built infrastructure (including new urban housing) may exceed the infrastructure being built since the beginning of industrialization,” the researchers said.

It’s the new infrastructure that would have to be largely engineered timber midrise buildings. “Continuous use of conventional building materials for future infrastructure development could claim 35–60% of the remaining carbon budget associated with limiting the global temperature increase to below 2 °C.”

Engineered timber would at least partially preserve the amount of carbon stored in the wood. But midrise buildings would need enough land. Also, the approach would require “highly productive plantations” of trees to create the necessarily materials. The amount of planting would need to at least double. Unprotected natural forests and related forest vegetation would be turned into wood plantations.

Then again, what if people continued to build with steel and concrete? That means much more mining than has been done, digging for materials and processing to make cement and then concrete.

Plus, when looking at land, how much is going to disappear along coastal areas because of rising sea levels? That would expand the amount of land and building needed for displaced populations. And then the roads and transportation for all the people living in cities as well as the additional water

Perhaps this approach would be a logical one, but it’s hard to envision what the world would look like or be like to live in.