Comparative Environmental Performances of Wood Structures from Various Sources in Taiwan

Abstract

Building materials are factors that cause environmental impacts in construction sector. Among those materials, wood has many benefits in building design in terms of sustainability such as lower energy consumption and lower greenhouse gas emissions in production. Due to insufficient wood resources in Taiwan, wood is imported from many regions of the world. This paper aims to investigate environmental impacts of three different regions that provide wood resources for wood structure construction in Taiwan. Regions have been investigated including West Canada, Pacific Northwest and Southeast in the USA. Methodology of life cycle assessment (LCA) is applied to the research in the analysis with environmental indicators such as energy consumption, global warming potential, acidification potential and air pollution. Results show, firstly, that wood manufacturing process is the major contribution in energy consumption, global warming potential and air pollution in three regions. However, acidification effect is caused greatly from the fact of long marine transportation. Secondly, wood resource from Canada for building structure in Taiwan has the least environmental impacts compared with wood resource from the USA. Therefore, it is suggested that the use of wood from Canada can mitigate environmental impacts toward the goal of sustainability.