Identifying Sustainable Wood Sources for the Construction Industry: A Case Study

Shenghan Li, Huanyu Wu and Zhikun Ding
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Shenghan Li: School of Civil Engineering, Shenzhen University, Shenzhen 518060, China
Huanyu Wu: School of Architecture and Built Environment, The University of Adelaide, Adelaide 5005, Australia
Zhikun Ding: School of Civil Engineering, Shenzhen University, Shenzhen 518060, China

Sustainability, 2018, vol. 10, issue 1, 1-14

Abstract: Wood is generally considered as a sustainable construction material. However, there are not sufficient wood resources in many countries or regions, especially those short of land resources. These countries and regions have to import wood from overseas. Therefore, it is imperative to determine how to choose sustainable importing sources in order to improve the sustainability performance of using wood in construction. This study compares the sustainability performance of wood imported from different regions by considering wood harvesting, manufacture, and transportation. A framework accounting energy consumption and CO 2 emissions is developed for sustainability assessment. The results show that importing wood from Canada, Australia, and New Zealand to Taiwan demands a relatively lower amount of energy than from other regions. Specifically, importing wood from Canada (West) demands the lowest amount of energy (2095 MJ/m 3 ), while importing wood form Brazil consumes the highest amount of energy (5356 MJ/m 3 ). In addition, findings showed that the CO 2 emissions generated from importing wood from Sweden are significant lower than those from other regions, although the energy consumed during the importing process is relatively high. The study also revealed that the wood manufacturing process and marine transportation contribute to the most energy consumption and CO 2 emissions among all importing processes analysed from most of studied regions.

Keywords: wood; building construction; cross-regional mobility; sustainability; energy consumption; CO 2 emissions (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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