Leveraging Climate Change Mitigation From Harvested Wood Products in the Built Environment

Harvested Wood Products (HWP) are increasingly being promoted by national policy makers, industry representatives and academics as an effective approach to decarbonise the built environment. HWPs lock up sequestered biogenic carbon out of the atmosphere for extended periods of time, and can substitute carbon intensive construction materials such as steel and concrete. To facilitate actionable policy making for decarbonisation of the European Union (EU) built environment, this study investigates future oriented scenarios relating to HWP biogenic carbon storage and associated HWP material substitution through prospective Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). Future oriented scenarios were designed to represent a range of possible value chain configurations and decarbonisation contexts. Value chain configurations start with “business as usual”, then integrate varying combinations of HWP carbon storage and bioenergy generation, with shorter or longer (cascading) value chains, with and without debated permanent storage options such as landfilling or Bioenergy, Carbon, Capture and Storage (BECCS). Decarbonisation contexts explore different rates of material and energy decarbonisation out to 2100, to understand the impact of diminishing greenhouse gas (GHG) substitution benefits through time on the net climate performance of HWP value chains (including upstream forestry dynamics). Results from this study provide insight to policy makers on how HWP deployment can facilitate the transition towards a net-zero built environment whilst also leveraging climate mitigation benefits across the land and energy sectors.