The SiOO X Story – Protecting the Planet - Book - Page 26
longer the wood products last, the greater is the benefit. This
is much better than considering a single building, where wildly
different (and often incorrect) answers can be obtained, depending upon the assumptions made.
The benefit of using timber in the built environment as a carbon store is clear, but what about the impacts associated with
processing the material?
A recent report for the UK Climate Change Committee (UK CCC)
showed that increasing the timber content of buildings produced a lower overall GWP impact (carbon footprint). These data
are for a detached house and for medium-rise flats, either built
using conventional masonry materials, or using high levels of
timber (e.g., CLT in the flats). This study showed that there was
more carbon stored in the timber buildings than was released
making them.
Treating wood with SiOO:X improves the longevity of products,
such as cladding, by producing an even weathered appearance,
meaning that timber products are not prematurely replaced for
aesthetic reasons. The chemical make-up of the SiOO:X formulation does not leave toxic residues in the wood, hence there is
no barrier to further use after the first life cycle and it is possible
to incinerate the material at the end of life.
Here, the positive values (in orange) and the negative values (in
green) are the atmospheric carbon that is stored in the timber
of the structure (even masonry structures contain timber, just
less of it).
The increased use of timber in construction does not only store
atmospheric carbon, but there is a measurable reduction in
the carbon footprint (GWP) per m2 of floor area for an identical
building. For the detached house, this saving amounted to 75
kg CO2 equivalents per m2 and for the high-rise flats 256 kg CO2
eq. per m2 floor area.
Finally, at the end of life (or multiple lives, if the wood is cascaded
down the value chain), the wood can be incinerated and the
solar energy stored in the material of the wood can be recovered and used to heat buildings, or generate electricity. The
stored biogenic carbon returns to where it came from – the
atmosphere. This is a true circular economy.
1 Spear, M., Hill, C., Norton, A., Price, C. (2019) Wood in Construction in the UK: An Analysis of the Carbon Abatement Potential. Report BC-1383-2018-ES,
The BioComposites Centre, Bangor University, Bangor, LL57 2UW, UK.
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