Temporally-differentiated biogenic carbon accounting of wood building product life cycles

Although standards have identified temporary carbon storage as an important element to consider in wood product LCAs, there has been no consensus on a methodology for its accounting. This work aims to improve the accounting of carbon storage and fluxes in long-life wood products in LCA. Biogenic carbon from harvested roundwood logs were tracked using the Carbon Budget Model Framework for Harvested Wood Products (CBMF-HWP). Carbon flows through wood product manufacturing, building life and end-of-life phases, and carbon stocks and fluxes from harvest to the atmosphere were estimated. To cover the products commonly used in the Canadian building industry, a range of softwood products types, provinces and territories and building lifetimes were considered. In addition, policy scenarios were considered in order to model the effects of dynamic parameters through time as a policy target is reached. Most wood products have similar emissions profiles, though cross-laminated timber has higher sawmill emissions and oriented-strand board has higher initial post-demolition emissions. The region of construction is also predictive of the initial post-demolition emissions. Higher recycling rates shift materials from landfills into subsequent product systems, thus avoiding landfill emissions. Landfill decay rates are affected by climate and results in a large range of landfill emissions. The degree of postponement of end-of-life emissions is highly dependent upon the wood product type, region and building lifespan parameters. This work develops biogenic carbon profiles that allows for modelling dynamic cradle-to-grave LCAs of Canadian wood products. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s42452-020-03979-2) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.