Wooden Skyscrapers help cool climate
Via Climate News Network
Wooden skyscrapers could tick a number of important boxes, including making a serious contribution to cutting climate impacts. The good news is they’re already helping to do that.
US scientists have a new green solution to urban construction: chop down trees and use the wood for buildings. Good strong timber buildings – and there are plans for 30-storey skyscrapers built of wood – would save on concrete and steel, save on carbon dioxide emissions and cut the use of fossil fuel.
The argument may seem counter-intuitive: that is because a substantial component of climate change stems from changes in land use and the loss of forests. And some researchers have demonstrated that even the most mature trees, the forest giants, can go on absorbing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
But Chadwick Oliver, a forester at the University of Yale and colleagues make the case in the Journal of Sustainable Forestry. They argue that if the world stepped up the harvest of the forests and used the wood efficiently then economies could save on fossil fuel, reduce carbon dioxide emissions and give people a reason to value the forests. [Learn more]