Breton, C., Blanchet, P., Amor, B. et al. (2 more authors) (2018) Assessing the climate change impacts of biogenic carbon in buildings: a critical review of two main dynamic approaches. Sustainability, 10 (6). 2020. ISSN 2071-1050
Abstract
Wood is increasingly perceived as a renewable, sustainable building material. The carbon it contains, biogenic carbon, comes from biological processes; it is characterized by a rapid turnover in the global carbon cycle. Increasing the use of harvested wood products (HWP) from sustainable forest management could provide highly needed mitigation efforts and carbon removals. However, the combined climate change benefits of sequestering biogenic carbon, storing it in harvested wood products and substituting more emission-intensive materials are hard to quantify. Although different methodological choices and assumptions can lead to opposite conclusions, there is no consensus on the assessment of biogenic carbon in life cycle assessment (LCA). Since LCA is increasingly relied upon for decision and policy making, incorrect biogenic carbon assessment could lead to inefficient or counterproductive strategies, as well as missed opportunities. This article presents a critical review of biogenic carbon impact assessment methods, it compares two main approaches to include time considerations in LCA, and suggests one that seems better suited to assess the impacts of biogenic carbon in buildings.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2018 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). |
Keywords: | climate change; sustainable buildings; embodied carbon; biogenic carbon; dynamic life cycle assessment; life cycle assessment; wood construction |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Sheffield |
Academic Units: | The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Social Sciences (Sheffield) > School of Architecture (Sheffield) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Sheffield |
Date Deposited: | 21 Jun 2018 12:58 |
Last Modified: | 24 Jun 2018 00:14 |
Published Version: | https://doi.org/10.3390/su10062020 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | MDPI |
Refereed: | Yes |
Identification Number: | 10.3390/su10062020 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:132398 |