Carbon and the construction industry.
House of Commons Environmental Audit Committee
The Future of Construction. The construction industry is facing a huge carbon challenge. It is one of the main global emitters of carbon. The cement industry, on its own, accounts for about 8% of the world’s carbon emissions, about the same as road traffic and one ton of cement emits about 800kg of carbon through its production process.
In contrast, wood is a natural and sustainable raw material which grows back faster than it is used up. During its growth, a tree absorbs carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and a building constructed with wood stores carbon for centuries. At the same time, with the help of solar energy and photosynthesis, new trees grow back and absorb more carbon. 1 m³ of wood stores approximately one ton of CO2.
CLT can reduce carbon emissions in the construction industry immediately and for obvious reasons is increasingly replacing concrete as the go-to material for a wide variety of applications.
Make CLT Mainstream.
Transforming the Construction Industry.
Construction, as we all know it, is an old fashioned trade. The Georgians would recognise how the construction industry currently builds houses (and the design of most of them).
In the last 200 years almost all of our manufacturing methods have been transformed for the good. We now make products in factories incredibly efficiently and to very high standards.
Yet for some reason the construction industry has not adopted these technologies. And as a result, the consumer is supposed to accept that their house will be inordinately expensive, badly built and often delivered late.
Further they will not know whether the materials used to build their house are sustainable and crucially what the carbon footprint of the build is.
Make CLT Mainstream.
Images Below Are Courtesy of Stora Enso