Assessing Cross Laminated Timber (CLT) as an Alternative Material for Mid-Rise Residential Buildings in Cold Regions in China—A Life-Cycle Assessment Approach

Ying Liu,Haibo Guo,Wen-Shao Chang,Cheng Sun

doi:10.3390/su8101047

Ying Liu, Haibo Guo + Show 2 more

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https://doi.org/10.3390/su8101047

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Journal: Sustainability	Publication Date: Oct 18, 2016
Citations: 78	License type: CC BY 4.0

Affiliation: University of Bath, Harbin Institute of Technology

Abstract

Timber building has gained more and more attention worldwide due to it being a generic renewable material and having low environmental impact. It is widely accepted that the use of timber may be able to reduce the embodied energy of a building. However, the development of timber buildings in China is not as rapid as in some other countries. This may be because of the limitations of building regulations and technological development. Several new policies have been or are being implemented in China in order to encourage the use of timber in building construction and this could lead to a revolutionary change in the building industry in China. This paper is the first one to examine the feasibility of using Cross Laminated Timber (CLT) as an alternative solution to concrete by means of a cradle-to-grave life-cycle assessment in China. A seven-storey reference concrete building in Xi’an was selected as a case study in comparison with a redesigned CLT building. Two cities in China, in cold and severe cold regions (Xi’an and Harbin), were selected for this research. The assessment includes three different stages of the life span of a building: materialisation, operation, and end-of-life. The inventory data used in the materialisation stage was mostly local, in order to ensure that the assessment appropriately reflects the situation in China. Energy consumption in the operation stage was obtained from simulation by commercialised software IESTM, and different scenarios for recycling of timber material in the end-of-life are discussed in this paper. The results from this paper show that using CLT to replace conventional carbon intensive material would reduce energy consumption by more than 30% and reduce CO2 emission by more than 40% in both cities. This paper supports, and has shown the potential of, CLT being used in cold regions with proper detailing to minimise environmental impact.

Highlights

The construction industry consumes about 40% of total energy worldwide and is responsible for nearly 36% of global CO2 emissions [1]
The results from this paper show that using Cross Laminated Timber (CLT) to replace conventional carbon intensive material would reduce energy consumption by more than 30% and reduce CO2 emission by more than 40% in both cities
This paper examines the potential to use CLT as an alternative construction material to carbon

Summary

Introduction

The construction industry consumes about 40% of total energy worldwide and is responsible for nearly 36% of global CO2 emissions [1]. The expansion of urban areas in China has accelerated energy consumption and a lack of energy efficiency measures for housing in China has made it worse. Some of the major cities in China have even higher carbon emissions per capita in comparison to those in the developed countries [2]. The government of China has set the target that CO2 emissions should be reduced by 40%–45% relative to 2005 by the end of 2020 [3,4]. Several government policies support the development of timber use as an alternative construction material to more energy intensive materials such as concrete.

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