Life Cycle Assessment of Wood Products

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to demonstrate possible contributions of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) studies of wood products to strategies and concepts for a mitigation of climate change. The framework and the current state of knowledge about the role of LCA as a tool to evaluate the environmental profile of products is presented. Although many of the main features are well established, there is still much debate on some basic assumptions of the inventory phase and the final valuation and interpretation of the results. For the global warming discussion, LCA can contribute highly disintegrated energy and mass flow data of processes and products over their entire life cycle. The impact stressor Global Warming Potential quantifies the direct contribution of a product system to the global warming problem, enables comparisons among product alternatives, and allows to model reduction scenarios. When LCA is applied on building products, wood based systems show considerable environmental benefits. These positive aspects shall be used to strengthen the competitiveness of wood based materials as building products and so to take advantage of the prolonged carbon sequestration period and a CO2 avoidance through substitution of energy intensive materials and fossil fuel.