Environmental Product Declarations of Structural Wood: A Review of Impacts and Potential Pitfalls for Practice

Rasmussen, Freja Nygaard; Andersen, Camilla Marlene Ernst; Wittchen, Alexandra; Hansen, Rasmus Nøddegaard; Birgisdóttir, Harpa

doi:10.3390/buildings11080362

Cited by 28 publications

(23 citation statements)

References 42 publications

(45 reference statements)

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Another method is the -1/+1 approach that account the sequestered carbon in wood materials as a negative impact during construction and consider it fully released at the EoL [5]. At times, the EoL is left out of Environmental Product Declarations of wooden building materials [8], consequently the release is not accounted in the -1/+1 approach and the wooden building material emerge as more climate friendly than it might be.…”

Section: Biogenic Carbon Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Wood as a carbon mitigating building material: A review of consequential LCA and biogenic carbon characteristics

Hansen

Rasmussen

Ryberg

et al. 2022

IOP Conf. Ser.: Earth Environ. Sci.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Buildings can potentially be carbon sinks by use of wood under correct circumstances because wood sequesters CO2 i.e., biogenic carbon, from the atmosphere by photosynthesis during growth. Consequential life cycle assessment (CLCA) works as a decision support tool to assess consequences from a change in demand by including only the processes that are affected by this demand through market-based modelling. This study aims to review current research about CLCA on wood in buildings. First, by examining methodological approaches linked to CLCA modelling and biogenic carbon accounting of wood in buildings. Second, to evaluate conclusions of studies using CLCA on wood in buildings. We conducted a literature review of 13 articles that fulfilled the criteria of stating to conduct a CLCA concerning either buildings, components, or materials where wood is one of the materials. The application of the reviewed studies include: method development, reuse, testing end of life aspects, CLCA inventory modelling, and comparison of ACLA and CLCA. The CLCA inventory of small-scale studies comprise a wide spectrum of methods ranging from simplistic to advanced methods, often retrospective. All large-scale studies integrate sophisticated modelling of prospective analysis. Dynamic time-dependent biogenic carbon accounting and indirect land use change (iLUC) are rarely represented. Although, both aspects have an impact on whether wood buildings respectively work as carbon sinks or provide net GHG emissions. Wood multi-storey buildings generally perform environmentally better than concrete and steel buildings due to wood displaces these materials and residues substitute fossil energy. End of life scenarios, choice of substituted production, retro- and prospective data, and the share of recycled steel further influence carbon mitigating potential of wood in buildings. Research of CLCA on wood in buildings are many-fold. Some studies partially evade inclusion of some CLCA aspects i.e., market delimitation, market trend, affected suppliers, and substitution. A simultaneously high integration of both CLCA, time-dependent biogenic carbon accounting, and iLUC in the same study is almost absent. Consequently, more empirical and methodological CLCA studies are needed while including dynamic time-dependent biogenic carbon accounting to improve understanding of implications of policy decisions in transitions towards increased use of wood in buildings.

show abstract

Section: Biogenic Carbon Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Wood as a carbon mitigating building material: A review of consequential LCA and biogenic carbon characteristics

Hansen

Rasmussen

Ryberg

et al. 2022

IOP Conf. Ser.: Earth Environ. Sci.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Anderson & Moncaster, (2020) also reviewed the embodied carbon (A1-A3) of in-situ concretes reported in EPD but did not consider their energy use. Rasmussen et al, (2021) reviewed the correlation between embodied carbon (A1-A3) and the total use of renewable primary energy (PERT), and of non-renewable primary energy (PENRT) as reported in EPD for structural timber products (cross laminated timber (CLT), glulam, laminated veneer lumber (LVL) and sawn timber). Rasmussen et al found only a low correlation (R 2 ) between embodied carbon and PERT (0.0192), and embodied carbon and PENRT (0.1162), they did not explore the correlation with PERE (renewable primary energy used as energy, so excluding the energy content of the actual timber itself) nor with the total energy consumption.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Embodied carbon, embodied energy and renewable energy: a review of environmental product declarations

Anderson

Moncaster

2023

Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers - Structures

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Environmental Product Declarations (EPD) to EN 15804 provide information about embodied carbon of construction products – their life cycle greenhouse gas emissions - alongside reporting use of renewable and non-renewable primary energy and secondary fuels amongst other environmental indicators. As the number of EPD to EN 15804 increase, they become a useful data resource to consider these impacts. As we move to reduce the embodied carbon of products, we also need to use renewable energy resources efficiently to allow the transition to net zero – this is due to the increasing demands on renewable energy to decarbonise industry, transport and domestic energy consumption and the limited capacity to expand renewable generation. This paper reviews published EPD data for structural and reinforcing steels, cement, bricks and structural timber products and considers, for the cradle to gate “product” life cycle stage, exploring the relationship of embodied carbon with embodied energy (total energy used), the balance of renewable and non-renewable energy, and the efficient use of energy. It finds, for bricks and timber, that EPD show products which use a greater percentage of renewable energy have higher embodied energy, suggesting a less efficient use of renewable energy for these products.

show abstract

“…Rasmussen et al conducted a comprehensive review of the EPDs of structural woods in which they analysed 81 EPDs across several countries. They found that the investigated EPDs had varied values (up to 90% uncertainty for GWP), which were caused by different specificities such as manufacturer, facility, co-production, time of data representation, and supply chain [54]. Janjua et al investigated the effect of service life on a building's environmental performance.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Comparative Study on the Life Cycle Assessment of New Zealand Residential Buildings

et al. 2022

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

In New Zealand, housing is typically low density, with light timber framing being the dominant form of construction with more than 90% of the market. From 2020, as a result of the global pandemic, there was a shortage of timber in New Zealand, resulting in increased popularity for light steel framing, the main alternative to timber for housing. At the same time, the New Zealand government is committed to sustainability practises through legislation and frameworks, such as the reduction of whole-of-life carbon emissions for the building industry. New Zealand recently announced reducing its net greenhouse gas emissions by 50% within 2030. Life cycle assessment (LCA) is a technique for assessing the environmental aspects associated with a product over its life cycle. Despite the popularity of LCA in the construction industry of New Zealand, prior research results seem varied. There is no unified NZ context database to perform an LCA for buildings. Therefore, in this paper, a comprehensive study using LCA was conducted to quantify and compare the quantity of carbon emissions from two commonly designed houses in the Auckland region, one built from light timber and the other from light steel, both designed for a lifespan of 90 years. The cradle-to-cradle system boundary was used for the LCA. From the results of this study, it was found that the light steel house had 12.3% more carbon in total (including embodied and operational carbons) when compared to the light timber house, of which the manufacturing of two houses had a difference of 50.4% in terms of carbon emissions. However, when the end-of-life (EOL) analysis was included, it was found that the extra carbon could be offset due to the steel’s recyclability, reducing the amount of embodied carbon in the manufacturing process. Therefore, there was no significant difference in carbon emissions between the light steel and the light timber building, with the difference being only 12.3%.

show abstract

Environmental Product Declarations of Structural Wood: A Review of Impacts and Potential Pitfalls for Practice

Cited by 28 publications

References 42 publications

Wood as a carbon mitigating building material: A review of consequential LCA and biogenic carbon characteristics

Wood as a carbon mitigating building material: A review of consequential LCA and biogenic carbon characteristics

Embodied carbon, embodied energy and renewable energy: a review of environmental product declarations

A Comparative Study on the Life Cycle Assessment of New Zealand Residential Buildings

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About