Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
needed for the construction with concrete, mainly due to the much higher emis-
sions for the production of this latter.
A study in Sweden shows that the reduced gas emissions to avoid the use of tra-
ditional construction materials in favor of wood, compensate the temporary carbon
losses stocked in forest due to wood harvesting (Eriksson et al. 2007 ). A similar
conclusion is presented by Taverna et al. ( 2007 ) for Switzerland: a more inten-
sive timber harvesting in national forests for construction uses would determine a
decrease in GHGs emissions of up to 13 %.
Furthermore, wood residues from forest harvesting or those obtained from con-
struction wood recycling may be used for producing energy in substitution of fos-
sil fuels and thus significantly contributing to the reduction of CO 2 emissions.
According to the United Nation's Environment Programme's Sustainable
Building and Climate Initiative, while all stages of a building's life-cycle (includ-
ing construction and demolition) produce GHG emissions, a building's operational
phase accounts for 80-90 % of the emissions resulting from energy use. The use
of woody biomass for domestic heating can therefore play an important role in the
emission budgets.
Several tools could be used so to improve the use of wood product.
A carbon tax applied to traditional construction materials proportional to the
amount of gas emitted for their production could stimulate the use of wood products.
The certification of forest products may also increase the demand for wood, inform-
ing consumers about sustainable forest management applied for wood production.
Wood materials should be promoted informing consumers about their technical
and environmental benefits.
Even the publicity of prestigious wood constructions can be used to success-
fully disseminate these information. In this sense, a positive case is the large roof
built in Hanover for the Expo 2000 ( http://www.krusi.com/Expo2000.html ) , or the
large echo given to the construction of a 16-storey wooden building in Norway
( http://inhabitat.com/worlds-tallest-wooden-building-planned-for-norway/ ).
7.4 Conclusions
The results from Chirici et al. ( 2011 ) confirmed a 35 % underestimation of official
wood harvesting statistics from coppice forests in Italy originally hypothesized by
Cutolo ( 2000 ) and Corona et al. ( 2004 ). Multitemporal high resolution remotely
sensed images can be operatively used with a probabilistic sampling procedure to
obtain a more reliable data on annual wood harvesting extents. This underestima-
tion of clear cuts area brings to an underestimation of carbon loss due to harvest-
ing of about 2 Mt annually.
The use of wood for construction purposes, substituting traditional materials,
tends to increase carbon sequestration and to contribute to climate change mitiga-
tion. The use of wood for generating energy has also a strong substitution effect as
it avoids using fossil fuels known as highly CO 2 emitting.
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