Comparative Life-Cycle Assessment of a High-Rise Mass Timber Building with an Equivalent Reinforced Concrete Alternative Using the Athena Impact Estimator for Buildings

Zhongjia Chen, Hongmei Gu, Richard D. Bergman and Shaobo Liang
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Zhongjia Chen: School of Technology, Beijing Forestry University, Beijing 100083, China
Hongmei Gu: Forest Service, Forest Products Laboratory, United States Department of Agriculture, Madison, WI 53726, USA
Richard D. Bergman: Forest Service, Forest Products Laboratory, United States Department of Agriculture, Madison, WI 53726, USA
Shaobo Liang: Forest Service, Forest Products Laboratory, United States Department of Agriculture, Madison, WI 53726, USA

Sustainability, 2020, vol. 12, issue 11, 1-15

Abstract: Buildings consume large amounts of materials and energy, making them one of the highest environmental impactors. Quantifying the impact of building materials can be critical to developing an effective greenhouse gas mitigation strategy. Using Athena Impact Estimator for Buildings (IE4B), this paper compares cradle-to-grave life-cycle assessment (LCA) results for a 12-story building constructed from cross-laminated timber (CLT) and a functionally equivalent reinforced concrete (RC) building. Following EN 15978 framework, environmental impacts for stages A1–A5 (product to construction), B2, B4, and B6 (use), C1–C4 (end of life), and D (beyond the building life) were evaluated in detail along resource efficiency. For material resource efficiency, total mass of the CLT building was 33.2% less than the alternative RC building. For modules A to C and not considering operational energy use (B6), LCA results show a 20.6% reduction in embodied carbon achieved for the CLT building, compared to the RC building. For modules A to D and not considering B6, the embodied carbon assessment revealed that for the CLT building, 6.57 × 10 5 kg CO 2 eq was emitted, whereas for the equivalent RC building, 2.16 × 10 6 kg CO 2 eq was emitted, and emissions from CLT building was 70% lower than that from RC building. Additionally, 1.84 × 10 6 kg of CO 2 eq was stored in the wood material used in the CLT building during its lifetime. Building material selection should be considered for the urgent need to reduce global climate change impacts.

Keywords: whole building; cross-laminated timber (CLT); environmental impacts; embodied carbon; cradle-to-grave (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (11)

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