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Building houses is great, but if you're growing the trees in order to sequestrate carbon, you'd better be reasonably sure a decent proportion of the wood doesn'
by taejo 8y ago
Building houses is great, but if you're growing the trees in order to sequestrate carbon, you'd better be reasonably sure a decent proportion of the wood doesn't release it's carbon within the next fifty years. I don't live in a country where wood is a major building material, but I'm imagining that most wood that goes into building gets discarded within a few decades and ends up decomposing or being burnt.
- chii 8y agoand wood doesn't make for a building material that can go higher than a few stories.
- abbe_k 8y agoOf course you're not getting skyscrapers from them but nowadays you can build at least five floors which is not that bad. Most buildings are below that I think.
- vidarh 8y agoHere's a 14 story wood-based apartment building in Norway: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e5XsqauBCX4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e5XsqauBCX4 http://treetsameie.no/ http://treetsameie.no/ There are many other wood-based buildings higher than that being planned. The key for most of them is the use of various hybrid wood-laminates.
- abbe_k 8y agoIf treated and maintained right it can last hundreds of years. So this is not really an issue and if you replace it with new wood it will still store carbon.
- taejo 8y ago> if you replace it with new wood it will still store carbon. Good point, although you need to be sure you aren't counting the wood you replace it with as more carbon storage. Every wooden house essentially provides a fixed amount of carbon storage, no matter how much of it is replaced, and only as long as it stands.