New research confirms that when it comes to carbon savings, mass timber buildings offer greater benefits than competitive building materials.
A multiyear comparative study, titled Comparative LCAs of Conventional and Mass TimberBuildings in Regions with Potential for Mass Timber Penetration, determined that mass timber buildings yield a 22-50% reduction in embodied carbon compared with functionally equivalent conventional buildings. This study is one part of a five-phase international research initiative spearheaded by the Nature Conservancy and funded by the Climate and Land Use Alliance and Doris Duke Charitable Foundation. The aim of the study is to understand the emissions associated with mass timber and traditional construction, and the safeguards needed to ensure that using more mass timber benefits people, forests and the planet.
As we’ve long known, wood is a plentiful, renewable natural resource with a significantly lower carbon footprint than many other building materials, as well as the capacity to store carbon long-term.
You can read the published journal articles here.
