Resilient Timber Construction in the Era of Climate Change: Lessons from the Mountain Pine Beetle
Public Deposited- Last Modified
- February 26, 2019
- Creator
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Burrows, John H.
- Affiliation: College of Arts and Sciences, Curriculum in Environment and Ecology, Environmental Studies
- Abstract
- The demands placed on the environment to supply raw-materials for future construction require changing the current paradigm away from carbon intensive materials. Replacing steel and concrete with wood as a construction material has been one suggestion to help make this transition because of the avoided carbon emissions from wood construction. However, this emphasis on wood construction comes at a time when the forests across North America are increasingly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. Consequently, the timber industry’s ability to use wood killed in climate-related disturbances has become increasingly important both economically and environmentally. Beginning with the example of the mountain pine beetle, this paper discusses the challenges and opportunities of using salvaged wood as a construction material. It demonstrates how the use of salvaged wood in construction can result in up to 24.8% more avoided carbon emissions than the use of normal wood. Using three examples of newly constructed wood buildings in Europe, the value of these avoided emissions is estimated as a percentage of the building cost and per cubic meter of wood used in construction. Results indicate that depending on the price of carbon, the values used to estimate avoided emissions from wood substitution, and the assumptions regarding the alternative uses for salvaged wood, that the value of avoided emissions from using salvaged wood could be as high as 2.3% of the building cost. If this value was made accessible to developers, it could be used as a financial incentive to increase the demand for wood products and encourage greater utilization of salvageable wood as a green building material.
- Date of publication
- spring 2014
- Keyword
- DOI
- Resource type
- Rights statement
- In Copyright
- Note
- Funding: None
- Advisor
- Yates, Andrew
- Degree
- Bachelor of Arts
- Honors level
- Honors
- Degree granting institution
- University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
- Extent
- 53
- Date uploaded
- April 24, 2014
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