Bamboo as a sustainable construction material for residential buildings in the cold and severe cold regions of China

Abstract

ABSTRACT bamboo is a construction material with excellent mechanical and thermal properties. It also has excellent carbon storage capacity and is already widely recognized as a sustainable construction material. This study quantifies the bamboo’s potential for energy efficiency and carbon emission reduction throughout the building life cycle in the cold and severe cold regions of China. A six-storey residential building is applied as a case study for a comparison between reinforced concrete (RC) and laminated bamboo lumber (LBL) construction in five representative cities. The comparison considers the inventory analysis of the materialization, operation, and end-of-life (EoL) stage, energy consumption as simulated by the commercial software IES-VE, and carbon emissions assessed by a process-based method. The results for the five cities show that the use of bamboo instead of the conventional reinforced concrete structure would reduce energy consumption by 3%∼5% and reduce CO2 emissions by 7%∼20%. The analyse of results demonstrates that bamboo residential buildings are more carbon-efficient in cold climates. Furthermore, this study clarifies the applicability and sustainability of bamboo construction materials and contributes to suggesting alternatives for the life cycle carbon reduction for residential buildings.