Life Cycle Assessment Tool Research Articles

Adaptive reuse of industrial heritage building – comparative life cycle assessment using a case study in Norway

Materials production dominates the total Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in the construction industry. On the other hand, most existing building stocks are expected to last for the next 30 years, which can contribute to increasing resource efficiency, reducing environmental impact, and creating social, cultural, and economic values for society. Therefore, it becomes vital to investigate the environmental impacts of adaptive reuse of existing buildings using a life cycle approach. The objective of this study is to explore the environmental performance of adaptive reuse of an industrial heritage building compared to new construction using a life cycle assessment (LCA) method. The environmental impacts of the selected case study are evaluated using four scenarios, with two adaptive reuse scenarios, a warehouse or an office building and two new construction scenarios, a new warehouse or a new office building. One-Click LCA is used as an LCA tool, and the scenarios are compared by total carbon footprint, life cycle models, GHG emissions per building elements and material types. The results show that among the four scenarios, the adaptive to warehouse scenario is the best adaptation option with considerably lower environmental impact, followed by the adaptive office scenario. This paper highlights that adaptation of existing industrial heritage buildings, with the least materials replacement option, is worthwhile. The further evaluation needed for the study’s limitation is also highlighted for data efficiency and potential for further research.

Holistic Approach for Assessing Buildings’ Environmental Impact and User Comfort from Early Design: A Method Combining Life Cycle Assessment, BIM, and Active House Protocol

Due to our increasing dependence on resources and energy, climate change is among the most tangible issues we are facing today. The construction industry has been identified as a key sector to intervene in, but mitigation strategies must focus on more than just operational energy. As current climate policies recommend, designers should consider the broader framework of environmental impacts characterizing the entire building lifecycle. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) considers the mentioned aspects. Nevertheless, the complexity of LCA and the criticalities of related tools prevent the application of the approach during decisive early stages. Additionally, LCA allows the estimation of environmental issues, but fails to describe other dimensions of sustainability. The article proposes an evaluation method to support decision-making during the design of sustainable buildings. The method exploits the LCA tool and the assessment framework provided by a Green Sustainable Building Certification (Active House) integrated with BIM. The approach was applied and proven through a case study: a residential single-family building in northern Italy, comparing two technological options. The study confirmed the effectiveness of the multicriteria evaluation framework that, from the early design stage, can be used to measure the environmental impact of buildings alongside implications for the final users’ comfort.

Application of recycled crushed glass in road pavements and pipeline bedding: An integrated environmental evaluation using LCA

The study aims to conduct a comprehensive life cycle assessment (LCA) of mixed glass waste (MGW) recycling processes to quantify the environmental impacts of crushed glass as a partial substitute for virgin aggregate. Upstream washing, crushing, and sorting conducted at material recycling facilities (MRF) are the prime activities to assess whether reprocessed MGW in pavement construction is an alternate feasible solution. None of the previous studies explicitly account for the relative uncertainties and optimization of waste glass upstream processes from an environmental perspective. The study calculates environmental impacts using the LCA tool SimaPro considering design factors attributed to transportation, electricity consumption, use of chemicals, and water for reprocessing glass waste. Relative uncertainties of design variables and the national transition policy (2021−2030) from non-renewable to renewable energy sources have been validated by performing detailed Monte Carlo simulations. The correlation coefficients (r = 0.64, 0.58, and 0.49) of successive variables explain how the higher environmental gains of the glass recycling process are outweighed by diesel, energy consumption, and transportation distances. Compared to natural quarry sand, the recycled glass aggregate produced through crushing and recycling of its by-products reduces CO2eq emissions by 16.2 % and 46.7 %, respectively. The need for a washing line at the plant, in addition to crushing, results in a higher environmental impact over natural sand by 90.1 % and emphasizes the benefits of collecting waste glass through a separate bin, hence avoiding contamination. The result indicates that the benefit of lowering emissions varies significantly when considering waste glass landfilling. Moreover, this study evaluates the potential impacts on asphalt and reinforced concrete pavements (RCP) with 5 %, 10 %, 15 %, and 20 % replacement of natural sand with recycled glass aggregate. The LCA emphasizes the limitations of energy-intensive waste glass reprocessing. The obtained results and uncertainty analysis based on primary MRF data and recycled product applications provide meaningful suggestions for a more fit-for-purpose waste management and natural resource conservation.

Social life cycle assessment of microalgae-based systems for wastewater treatment and resource recovery

The aim of this study was to assess the social impacts of microalgae-based systems for wastewater treatment and bioproducts recovery by using the Social Life Cycle Assessment (S-LCA) tool. In particular, two systems were analysed: 1) a system treating urban wastewater, and 2) another system treating wastewater from the food industry. Moreover, these alternatives were compared to 3) a system for bioproducts production from microalgae grown in a standard growth medium. The recovered bioproducts in all the systems considered were: natural pigments, biogas and digestate, which can be reused as biofertilizer. Results showed that the scenario using standard growth medium was the one showing the best results in all impacts and stakeholder categories (up to 24-fold lower impacts depending on the impact category). This was mainly due to: i) the simplicity of the system, which consequently improves health and safety for workers; ii) the absence of contaminants which consequently improves health and safety, acceptability and olfactory impact for both consumers and the local community; iii) the presence of well-established legislation, regulatory frameworks, and full-scale deployment, which benefit value chain actors and society. Overall, this study also identified several social factors hindering a transition towards a circular bioeconomy in the microalgae-based systems for the wastewater treatment and resource recovery sector.

Transition toward Eco-Efficiency of Two Synthesis Methods for Nano-Enabled Pesticides

Nanoparticle synthesis methodologies have been developed over the last decades for reducing the concentrations of pesticides such as atrazine in the environment. In this work, life cycle assessment (LCA) and economic performance analysis tools were used to evaluate the eco-efficiency transition of two laboratory-scale synthesis processes for polymeric nanoparticles (NPo) containing atrazine (ATZ), namely, a double emulsion process (DEm) and a nanoprecipitation process (NPr). Life cycle inventories for both synthesis processes included the flows of matter and energy at a laboratory scale, complementing information from the Ecoinvent database. LCA used the ReCiPe 2016 methodology with a midpoint (H) to produce NPo + ATZ at a concentration of 1 mg ATZ mL–1 of final solution (functional unit). For both processes, freshwater ecotoxicity stood out among the impact categories evaluated, due to significant electricity consumption. The DEm process had a 61% higher total environmental impact, compared to the NPr process. The total cost of the DEm process per functional unit was 5% higher than that of the NPr process. Therefore, NPr achieved a gain of 54% for the eco-efficiency transition, in relation to DEm, for the production of NPo + ATZ. Two steps influenced this result that only occurred in the DEm process: sonication and the use of dichloromethane. Therefore, eco-efficiency enabled identification of the greener production process and the steps that had greater environmental and economic impacts in two NPo synthesis processes.

Carbon assessment of building shell options for eco self-build community housing through the integration of building energy modelling and life cycle analysis tools

To achieve the UK's net-zero carbon transition by 2050, new homes need to be designed to high energy efficiency standards and minimise life cycle carbon emissions. This study develops a method that integrates building energy modelling (BEM) and life cycle assessment (LCA) tools, IES Virtual Environment (IES VE) and One Click LCA, to conduct a life cycle assessment of the operational and embodied carbon impacts of a typical terraced building shell in an eco self-build community housing (ESBC) project, using Water Lilies as a case study. It evaluates and compares the 60-year life cycle carbon impacts of six design options that apply different insulation materials to the case study building shell. The results are based on grid-connected Future Energy Scenarios (FES) that have different carbon intensities predicted over time and the microgrid-connected Water Lilies Community Energy (WLCE) scenario that is operationally net-zero carbon. Depending on the FES, embodied carbon accounted between 59 and 80% of total emissions compared to 20–41% from operational carbon across design options. The results show that operational carbon is highly sensitive to the percentage of renewables in the energy mix of the grid, which is difficult to predict, and can significantly influence the design choice. As such, future researchers should account for predicted changes to the carbon intensity of the grid by applying a similar method to that proposed. Overall, the integration of IES VE and One Click LCA provided a more streamlined life cycle assessment to help inform early design decisions by enabling energy consumption simulation in BEM to assess operational carbon emissions and the automated transfer of building materials from the BEM model to the LCA tool to assess embodied carbon emissions. The limitations included the unavailability of material-specific data in early design stage plans, the inability to automatically transfer the timber frame structure from IES VE to One Click LCA, and the uncertainty of future energy trends.

Integrating Multi-Criteria Techniques in Life-Cycle Tools for the Circular Bioeconomy Transition of Agri-Food Waste Biomass: A Systematic Review

Agri-food waste biomass (AWB) is consolidating as a relevant bioresource for supplying material products and energy in a circular bioeconomy. However, its recovery and sustainable processing present trade-offs that must be understood. The integration of multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) into life-cycle assessment (LCA) tools has emerged as a novel way to address this challenge. This paper aims to conduct a systematic literature review to critically synthesize how MCDA has been integrated into LCA in an assessment framework and how helpful it is in AWB’s circular bioeconomy transition. The literature shows that the most studied AWBs are rice husk, sugarcane bagasse, and household food waste. These are processed through the technologies of composting, anaerobic digestion, and pyrolysis for applications such as biofuels, bioenergy, and soil amendment. Environmental LCA (E-LCA) is the most widely used LCA tool, while both the analytical hierarchy process (AHP) and the technique for ordering preference by similarity to the ideal solution (TOPSIS) are the most applied techniques for MCDA. The current trend of integrating MCDA into LCA does not fully cover the LCA phases, favoring solely the impact assessment phase and indicating that the other phases are overlooked. The potential and involvement of the stakeholders are partially explored. Although there are holistic sustainability assessments, the social implications are rarely considered. The number of MCDA/LCA studies is expected to increase, assessments at the micro-, meso-, and macro-scales to become more articulated, and the impact of the results to become more aligned with government and company goals.

A framework for evaluation of improvement opportunities for environmental impacts on construction works using life cycle assessment and value stream mapping concepts: offsite and onsite building construction

There have been various concerns about the environmental impact of construction works. This generates a need to take a more proactive approach in evaluating the environmental impacts of construction operations and further explore ways to reduce the environmental impacts. Enormous opportunities exist within the building industry to achieve a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. The aim of the study is to develop a framework for the evaluation of improvement opportunities for environmental impact for onsite and offsite building construction works using life cycle assessment (LCA) and value-stream-mapping concepts. Various tools for LCA exist; however, there is a need for the development of an LCA framework and improvement opportunities that can be localized to various communities to evaluate improvement opportunities for building construction. This study conducts a review of methods to evaluate the LCA of buildings on local construction sites. A procedure for establishing improvement opportunities is also developed. Based on the author’s knowledge and experience, including site visits, using value stream mapping (VSM) techniques, a conceptual framework of the present state map and future state map of residential construction works was developed. The study presents a procedure for the evaluation of improvement opportunities for the environmental impacts of construction operations.

Life cycle assessment as a tool for sustainable space activity in Aotearoa New Zealand

New Zealand’s space sector is at the early stages of growth but already attracts 1.5% of global private investment in space and contributes NZD 1.75 billion per year in revenue to the national economy. Growth has in part been due to the country’s desirable location for space operations due to a combination of geographic advantages, with its clear seas and skies and access to a wide range of launch angles, a skilled workforce, and strong government financial incentives.There are however challenges to future space activities such as the risk to long-term access and use of Earth’s orbital environment, specifically from space debris and a growing challenge to the whole-of-life of space operations, from the climate emergency and biodiversity crises. Consequently, there is increasing global motivation and urgency to quantify environmental consequences of space activities, which have historically been omitted from legislative and regulatory requirements. This paper provides a summary of the commercial development of New Zealand’s space sector and where appropriate environmental regulation and legislation may have been overlooked, as well as outlining broader environmental concerns of space operations.New Zealand’s emerging space industry offers a unique opportunity to integrate international best practices for environment and sustainability at a foundational level, for example, the European Space Agency’s Clean Space Initiative and their Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) Tool and Eco-design Framework. These types of tools provide valuable sources of information to support policy and business decisions.This paper provides a case study for an environmental LCA for a New Zealand designed and launched CubeSat which is the most launched satellite type from New Zealand. The case study indicates how the LCA can be used to identify environmental hotspots during the preliminary and detailed design phases as well as the launch event. Barriers and gaps in data collection have also been identified. As a result of this work, a set of recommendations have been made for further research requirements on the application of LCA to space activities.

Utilization of an Automatic Tool for Building Material Selection by Integrating Life Cycle Sustainability Assessment in the Early Design Stages in BIM

Recent international scientific studies have described the current situation regarding CO2 emissions and have provided evidence of its catastrophic short- and medium-term consequences. The implementation of solutions of a more sustainable nature to reduce and mitigate this situation is becoming increasingly urgent. To this end, the integration of multi-dimension and life cycle assessment into the design process of buildings can help and support decision making. Life Cycle Sustainability Assessment (LCSA) is one of the scientific community’s most widely recognized methodologies for this purpose, combining the evaluation of the social, economic, and social dimensions (Triple Bottom Line). One of the main obstacles to implementing this methodology lies in the difficulties in automatically comparing alternative design options for the selection of different materials. To overcome this limitation, the authors developed the BIM3LCA (Building Information Modelling Three Life Cycle Assessment) tool conceived to guide the decision-making process during the early design steps. This study introduces a Building Information Modelling (BIM) plug-in development and validates its application in a case study to support the multi-criteria building material selection based on the LCSA implementation at the early design stage. Three building material alternatives for the structural system of a multi-family residential building are employed to validate this plug-in. The results show the viability of using this tool during the early design stages and demonstrates the consistency of the results regarding the use of the BIM model to conduct the LCSA. The study discusses the benefits and limitations of the BIM3LCA tool. This research contributes towards the integration of multi-dimension real-time assessment in the building design process by using semantically rich BIM models.

Carbon Analysis, Life Cycle Assessment, and Prefabrication: A Case Study of a High-Rise Residential Built-to-Rent Development in the UK

Recent research relating to energy use and carbon emissions by buildings has started to move from operational energy carbon impacts to the embodied energy/carbon impacts of buildings, and the methods and approaches used in architectural design to reduce embodied carbon have become more prominent. From a practitioner’s perspective, working with an ‘in-house’ Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) tool has become a growing trend for architects, and one perceived way of improving the LCA outcomes of a proposed building is to consider prefabrication of the construction process. Initiatives such as the Low Energy Transformation Initiative (LETI) and government bodies such as Greater London Authorities (GLA) provide guidance on LCA and upfront carbon emission targets for transitioning to net zero by 2050. The aim of this study was to establish (i) the LCA impacts from prefabricated residential buildings against current benchmarks; (ii) boundaries and opportunities in architectural practice in the UK when conducting an LCA; (iii) the effectiveness of an in-house LCA tool. This study shows that, although the life-cycle emissions of this prefabricated building achieved a low band in the LETI labelling system, with 1076 kgCO2e/m², it still performs better than the business-as-usual model value of 1200 kgCO2e/m². The results also reveal that the construction industry is not ready to provide realistic data on the prefabrication process to test its advantages compared to conventional constructional methods. However, having an in-house LCA tool provides a faster and more comprehensive LCA due to the commitment to carbon assessment in the office and saves time compared to manual calculations.

A eficiência ambiental e microbiológica da limpeza de vegetais

ABSTRACT Faced with the increase in water scarcity periods, the optimization of the use of this resource is increasingly necessary. This study aimed to evaluate the cleaning stage of Lactuca sativa for the preparation of meals outside the home with the participation of 9 restaurants using the Life Cycle Assessment tool, being later also extended to homes, with the participation of 8 households. The agricultural stage represented an average of 39.8% of all the impacts, the lettuce polypropylene wrap 14.4% and the transport stages 26.1%. The use of “blue” water ranged from 38 to 71 liters per kg of raw lettuce only in the cleaning stage, which represents 76% (households) and 77% (restaurants) of all the water used in the whole life cycle. In evaluations carried out, cleaning was considered efficient from the sanitary point of view, with 100% of the samples with Escherichia coli counts below the maximum allowed. The variability of the data obtained and the measured efficiency of sanitization, together, support the possibility of reducing the water consumption, mainly through training and awareness of the operators.

Advancing cleaner municipal waste transport through carbon accounting in the cap-and-trade system

Promoting cleaner municipal solid waste transportation processes plays a key role in sustainable waste management. In this study, a regional cap-and-trade system as an incentive tool was developed and applied to waste disposal in Montreal, Canada. The full life-cycle carbon emissions of a waste transport fleet, including four alternative energy scenarios, were accounted for using the GHGenius life cycle assessment tool. Different carbon caps were also considered, as evidence to support the industry’s ongoing low-carbon efforts under Quebec’s 2030 green plan. The results revealed that the electric fleet decreased carbon emissions (CO2-equivalent) by 94.40% when compared to the diesel fleet and achieved a cost savings of 63.13% percent when carbon trading offsets were utilized. Considering all cap tightening, credit offsets, and possible subsidies, the electric fleet outperforms the other options in both economics and emission reductions. The findings have important implications for sustaining the low-carbon municipal waste management.

Life Cycle Assessment Tool for Food Supply Chain Environmental Evaluation

Food is at the centre of efforts to combat climate change, reduce water stress, pollution, and conserve the world’s wildlife. Assessing the environmental performance of food companies is essential to provide a comprehensive view of the production processes and gain insight into improvement options, but such a tool is currently non-existent in the literature. This study proposed a tool based on the life cycle assessment methodology focused on six stages of the food chain, raw materials acquisition, supplier, manufacturing, distribution, retail and wastes. The user can also evaluate the implementation of Internet of Things (IoT) technologies to reduce food waste applied in the real-world problems. The tool was validated through a case study of a food manufacturing company that prepares frozen meals via vending machines. The LCA results provided by the tool showed that food raw materials production is the main hotspot of nine impact categories. The IoT technologies’ contribution increased the company’s impact by around 0.4%. However, it is expected that employing these monitoring technologies would prevent food waste generation and the associated environmental impacts. Therefore, the results of this paper provide evidence that the proposed tool is suitable for determining environmental impacts and savings of food supply chain companies.

Optimal BIM and LCA integration approach for embodied environmental impact assessment

It has been widely acknowledged that applications of building information modeling (BIM) can facilitate the effectiveness of embodied environmental impact assessment of buildings. Various approaches for integrating BIM software and life cycle assessment (LCA) tools have been developed in recent years. However, limited research has been conducted in defining appropriate BIM-LCA integration approaches for embodied environmental impact assessment. To address this issue, this research develops a way of selecting the optimal BIM-LCA integration approach that incorporates the needs of different scenarios for the performance of the integration approach. Three scenarios of environmental impact assessment are designed to demonstrate the application of the proposed way, including 1) environmental impact assessment in early design stage, 2) environmental impact assessment in the detailed design stage, and 3) environmental impact assessment in construction design stage. The demonstration results indicate that the method of “using visual programming languages” is the optimal BIM-LCA integration approach for assessing environmental impacts in the early and construction design stages. The methods of “adopting LCA plugin for BIM-software” and “using visual programming languages” are the optimal approaches for environmental assessment in the scenario of detailed design stages. This research assists LCA practitioners in selecting optimal BIM-LCA integration approaches in different scenarios and further promotes the applications of BIM-LCA integration approaches during the whole design process of a building.

Sensitivity analysis of design variables in life-cycle environmental impacts of buildings

Buildings are responsible for a large portion of global energy consumption and carbon emissions. Improvements in building design contribute to reducing environmental impacts of buildings. In this context, a crucial issue is to understand which design variables should be considered while which variables could be negligible. The objective of this study is to develop a framework for assessing the influence of various design variables throughout the design process in the environmental impacts of a building over its life cycle. This methodological framework combined building information modelling and life cycle assessment tools and a global sensitivity analysis using the Morris elementary effects method. A residential building was applied to demonstrate the developed framework. The influence of six design variables in early design stages (including, floor area, aspect ratio, floor height, orientation, window-to-wall ratio and number of floors), nine variables in detailed design stages (including, structure type of external and internal walls, type of insulation material for external and internal walls, insulation material for floors, waterproofing and insulation material for roof, type of window frame, and glazing type), and four variables in construction design stages (including, type of finishing for external walls, internal walls and floors, and roof tiles) are examined. Three environmental impact criteria (including, embodied, operational, and life-cycle environmental impacts) of a building are considered. The results identified the most influential variables throughout the design process, highlighting aspect ratio in early design stage, the structure and insulation materials for walls in detailed design stages, and the roof title in construction design stages. The outcomes of this research can assist in understanding the importance of design variables in each design stage throughout the design process of a building.

A review of embodied life cycle assessment tools used to support the building design process

Buildings and construction have a significant effect on our natural environment and are major contributors towards global energy use and greenhouse gas emissions. Understanding and improving the environmental performance of buildings is critical to reducing these effects. While there has been some success reducing the operational effects of buildings, the significance of embodied environmental effects is rising. Built environment professionals must be better equipped to understand and integrate these considerations into iterative decision-making processes. Life cycle assessment (LCA) is a commonly used technique to quantify environmental effects across the life cycle of a building, however, it is not widely used by building designers. This is partially due to time constraints, the complexity of conducting detailed LCA, and the limited amount of building information available during early building design. The aim of this review is to identify the breadth of LCA tools available that support the building design process, with a focus on embodied environmental effects. A review of literature is conducted which identifies attributes and properties of these tools including: software attributes, relevance to design phases, features for building design, life cycle coverage, and data attributes. The review finds a lack of consistency between LCA tools, with varying levels of data transparency and completeness, and challenges for incorporating these tools into prevalent design workflows.

Trade-Off Characterization Between Social and Environmental Impacts Using Agent-Based Product Adoption Models and Life Cycle Assessment

Abstract Meeting the United Nations (UN) sustainable development goals efficiently requires designers and engineers to solve multi-objective optimization problems involving trade-offs between social, environmental, and economical impacts. This paper presents an approach for designers and engineers to quantify the social and environmental impacts of a product at a population level and then perform a trade-off analysis between those impacts. In this approach, designers and engineers define the attributes of the product as well as the materials and processes used in the product’s life cycle. Agent-based modeling (ABM) tools that have been developed to model the social impacts of products are combined with life cycle assessment (LCA) tools that have been developed to evaluate the pressures that different processes create on the environment. Designers and engineers then evaluate the trade-offs between impacts by finding non-dominated solutions that minimize environmental impacts while maximizing positive and/or minimizing negative social impacts. Product adoption models generated by ABM allow designers and engineers to approximate population level environmental impacts and avoid Simpson’s paradox, where a reversal in choices is preferred when looking at the population level impacts versus the individual product-level impacts. This analysis of impacts has the potential to help designers and engineers create more impactful products that aid in reaching the UN sustainable development goals.

Integrated decision support for embodied impact assessment of circular and bio-based building components

The construction industry is accounted for one third of all waste generation in the European Union (EU) countries. The Interreg Circular Bio-Based Construction Industry (CBCI) project was conceived to explore the circular principles and bio-based materials for enhancing sustainability in construction industry. This study provides a new approach for decision support via a case study on early design phase of a demo terraced single family house; the living lab (LL) located in Ghent (Belgium). The decision support utilizes circularity tools and life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology. For this purpose, nine preliminary designs (PD) for the building envelope were assessed in a comparative study, which consists of three basic construction methods: masonry, light-weight steel and wood framing construction supplemented with bio-based materials. Environmental impact assessment was supported with the circularity tools focusing on the reuse and recyclability potential in the end-of-life (EoL) scenarios. The integration of LCA and circularity tools displayed that bio-based design PDs have an increased performance due to the avoided environmental impact through reuse and recycling in the EoL scenarios. As a result, a novel approach that integrates circularity calculations with LCA methodology was provided to improve long-term impact analysis on circular buildings with more precision in end-of-life scenario development.

Emerging Engineered Wood for Building Applications.

The building sector, including building operations and materials, was responsible for the emission of ∼11.9 gigatons of global energy-related CO2 in 2020, accounting for 37% of the total CO2 emissions, the largest share among different sectors. Lowering the carbon footprint of buildings requires the development of carbon-storage materials as well as novel designs that could enable multifunctional components to achieve widespread applications. Wood is one of the most abundant biomaterials on Earth and has been used for construction historically. Recent research breakthroughs on advanced engineered wood products epitomize this material's tremendous yet largely untapped potential for addressing global sustainability challenges. In this review, we explore recent developments in chemically modified wood that will produce a new generation of engineered wood products for building applications. Traditionally, engineered wood products have primarily had a structural purpose, but this review broadens the classification to encompass more aspects of building performance. We begin by providing multiscale design principles of wood products from a computational point of view, followed by discussion of the chemical modifications and structural engineering methods used to modify wood in terms of its mechanical, thermal, optical, and energy-related performance. Additionally, we explore life cycle assessment and techno-economic analysis tools for guiding future research toward environmentally friendly and economically feasible directions for engineered wood products. Finally, this review highlights the current challenges and perspectives on future directions in this research field. By leveraging these new wood-based technologies and analysis tools for the fabrication of carbon-storage materials, it is possible to design sustainable and carbon-negative buildings, which could have a significant impact on mitigating climate change.