Strategies to reduce CO2 emissions and increase temporary carbon stock in Brazilian housing using planted wood

Abstract

Wood is a biological material; it is renewable and widely used in construction projects around the world. One of its main features is its ability to capture CO2 from the atmosphere and temporarily store carbon; this helps to mitigate climate change. This research analyzes strategies to reduce CO2 emissions and increase temporary carbon storage in the Brazilian construction sector by promoting the long-term use of planted wood for housing purposes. To this end, two strategies are developed: the first (SS1) proposes to increase the yield of the primary processing performance of sawn wood by 7.0%; the second (SS2) replaces the market share of wood products with a short life cycle (<1 year) with those with a long-life cycle (>40 years) in construction. It was found that, compared to the reference scenario, the implementation of SS1 and SS2 can mitigate ∼4% (27.6 MtCO2) and ∼1% (89.9 MtCO2), respectively, of accumulated emissions between 2024 and 2050. Temporary carbon storage can be increased by up to 6% (8.3 MtC) via the increase in wood frame houses, or up to 15% temporary carbon (20.4 MtC) via the increase in cross-laminated timber houses (hypothetical maximum potential values). A sensitivity analysis was performed considering native wood from both managed and unmanaged forests, and the results indicate that the proposals satisfy the objective only in the planted wood scenarios.