Development of life-cycle inventory for timber products to support the circular economy in construction

Abstract

The supply of raw materials from Irish forests is forecasted to double between 2017-2035, creating opportunities to increase the output of timber products for construction. Furthermore, residential building construction in Ireland needs to achieve an average annual rate of completion of up 35,000 within the next decade to meet housing demands and population growth. A significant challenge for sustainable construction globally is materials with high embodied carbon, like steel and concrete, remain the primary structural material choices. Although the potential increase in carbon emissions from future construction can be minimised through substitution using timber products, full lifecycle assessment and comparison of such structural solutions to quantify the climate mitigation benefits can be limited by a lack of detailed lifecycle data. Therefore, this paper summarises the development of a national reference database for this lifecycle information and presents a quantification of the lifecycle impacts of Irish timber solutions for sustainable construction.