Life Cycle Assessment of Cross-Laminated Timber Transportation from Three Origin Points

Mahboobeh Hemmati, Tahar Messadi and Hongmei Gu
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Mahboobeh Hemmati: Environmental Dynamics Ph.D. Program, Graduate School and International Education, University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, AR 72701, USA
Tahar Messadi: Fay Jones School of Architecture and Design, University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, AR 72701, USA
Hongmei Gu: USDA Forest Service, Forest Products Laboratory, Madison, WI 53726, USA

Sustainability, 2021, vol. 14, issue 1, 1-17

Abstract: Cross-laminated timber (CLT) used in the U.S. is mainly imported from abroad. In the existing literature, however, there are data on domestic transportation, but little understanding exists about the environmental impacts from the CLT import. Most studies use travel distances to the site based on domestic supply origins. The new Adohi Hall building at the University of Arkansas campus, Fayetteville, AR, presents the opportunity to address the multimodal transportation with overseas origin, and to use real data gathered from transporters and manufacturers. The comparison targets the environmental impacts of CLT from an overseas transportation route (Austria-Fayetteville, AR) to two other local transportation lines. The global warming potential (GWP) impact, from various transportation systems, constitutes the assessment metric. The findings demonstrate that transportation by water results in the least greenhouse gas (GHG) emission compared with freight transportation by rail and road. Transportation by rail is the second most efficient, and by road the least environmentally efficient. On the other hand, the comparison of the life cycle assessment (LCA) tools, SimaPro (Ecoinvent database) and Tally (GaBi database), used in this research, indicate a remarkable difference in GWP characterization impact factors per tonne.km (tkm), primarily due to the different database used by each software.

Keywords: life cycle assessment; mass timber; cross-laminated timber; transport; global warming potential; SimaPro; Tally (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
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