Carbon Mitigation Impacts of Increased Softwood Lumber and Structural Panel Use for Nonresidential Construction in the United States

Abstract

More wood use in the United States to construct low-rise nonresidential (NR) buildings would increase consumption and production of softwood (SW) lumber, engineered wood products, and structural and nonstructural wood panels. Using a consequential life-cycle analysis, we estimated the change in net CO 2 emissions that would be caused by increased use of SW lumber and structural panels in NR construction. Carbon (C) storage and emissions were projected over 50 years for baseline and increased wood use scenarios using the US Forest Products Module operating within the Global Forest Products Model (USFPM/GFPM) and the Southern region timber supply model (SRTS). Increased wood use in NR construction (C content of 428 million tons of carbon dioxide equivalent [tCO 2 e]) could provide an emissions reduction of 870 million tCO 2 e over 50 years or a net emissions reduction of 2.03 tCO 2 e/tCO 2 e of extra wood used in NR buildings over 50 years. The CO 2 savings varied for products provided in the South, North, and West because of differences in biological timber regrowth; market-induced changes in land use; differences in timber harvests, lumber, and structural panel production; and associated differences in C stored in forests, harvested wood products, logging slash, and manufacturing emissions. The US South provided the largest net change, À2.83 tCO 2 e/tCO 2 e of extra wood products, followed by the North and West withÀ1.89 andÀ0.60 tCO 2 e/tCO 2 e of extra wood, respectively. These results suggest strategies that result in increased use of wood in place of nonwood products in NR buildings would be effective in mitigating CO 2 emissions.

Climate impacts of carbon sequestration of forests and material substitution by energy biomass and harvested wood products under boreal conditions

“…In this case, the contribution of a carbon stock of sawn wood to the climate impacts was higher than for pulp/paper products, regardless of the timing of final felling (Paper III). Sawn wood products retained carbon out of the atmosphere for longer than pulp/paper products (Bowyer et al 2010;Pingoud et al 2010;Bergman et al 2014), and the substitution impacts of wood products, along with increased carbon stocks, enhanced the climate impacts further, which is in line with previous studies (Jasinevičius et al 2015;Nepal et al 2016;Gustavsson et al 2017;Xu et al 2017).…”

Wood substitution potential in greenhouse gas emission reduction–review on current state and application of displacement factors

“…Changes in forest and HWP carbon stocks were not included in DFs except in single cases (Table 1). Nepal et al (2016) included changes in forest carbon stock due to harvest of energy wood in DFs. Geng et al (2017b) included HWP carbon stock as offset emissions in the DFs in their basis scenario.…”

Exploring the regional-scale potential of the use of wood products in non-residential buildings: A building permits-based quantitative approach

“…For studies focusing on the NR buildings, (Nepal et al 2016;Ortlepp et al 2016;Huang et al 2017), the method is the same as the common one for residential buildings (i.e., total surface area of buildings multiplied by the material intensity (kg/m 2 ) per building type (Huang et al 2013)). When data is not already available, authors use other proxies.…”

“…These drivers are determinant parameters influencing the consumption of the sector. The main driver in developed countries is the population (Müller et al 2014;Nepal et al 2016;Huang et al 2017;Kayo et al 2018). With this parameter, the gross domestic product (GDP) or other macroeconomic indicators of the sector (e.g., the area per capita in m 2 /P) are also determinant parameters illustrating human activities.…”