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Original Articles

Wooden buildings as carbon storages – Mitigation or oration?

Pages 291-297 | Received 16 Feb 2019, Accepted 19 Jun 2019, Published online: 28 Jun 2019
 

ABSTRACT

Ways to long-term storage of carbon molecules captured as CO2 from atmosphere are looked for. Timber structures act as carbon storages and timber construction is sometimes claimed as a solution to mitigate climate change. This article attempts to estimate (a) the volume of carbon stored in wooden structures of new buildings annually, and (b) the role of new wooden buildings as a compensator of human-caused annual CO2 emissions in Finland and globally. Annual share from the total CO2 emissions stored in wooden buildings is called building sink effect (BSE). The BSE was 0.61 in Finland in 2017, and global BSE is even smaller. In order to achieve a global BSE of 1%, approximately 450 million m3 of wood products, corresponding to 85% of the global production of lumber, all structural engineered wood and construction logs, should be long-term stored in buildings. New wooden buildings have almost indistinguishable mitigative influence on annual CO2 emissions. However, timber construction is an important factor in a strategy towards more climate smart future, and substitution effects multiply the effects of physical carbon storages. Still more powerful actions, such as emission cuts or reforestation, have to be implemented to see real climate effects.

Acknowledgements

The author cordially thanks Dr Jukka Alm from the Natural Resources Institute Finland Luke for his useful comments on the abstract. Luke is acknowledged for funding the working time allocated for this article.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

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