Buildings That Lock In Carbon
by Lloyd Alter, Toronto on 10.30.06
They thought Architect Terunobu Fujimori was nuts in 2001 when he presented his Tokyo Plan 2101- "During the 21st century, the sea level has continued to rise due to global warming. Venice, then Tokyo, have been covered with water. The trickiest problem is not to control the release of carbon dioxide but to reduce the large quantities already in the air." Fujimori recognized that the atmosphere used to have much higher CO2, but that plants and corals converted it into oxygen. If you build with wood and coral, the CO2 is locked inside it. It doesn't seem so silly now. Terunobu Fujimori via ::wwmna
I basically agree with the idea that we can use wood to store carbon. I generally don't like the use of wood for house building in most locations and situations for a large number of environmental reasons - wood structures have their place in some limited locations. And I am generally opposed to increased use of wood because of continued deforestation in most parts of the world - this is one of the main causes of global warming as well as contributing to flooding, mudslides, wildlife extinction and so on. Having said this, wood is carbon. And the old wooden furniture in my home is carbon that was taken out of the air by a tree. Hopefully, I will use this furniture as long as I live, meaning that the carbon it contains stays locked up in solid form. If global society can halt deforestation, begin reforesting, and establish extensive and expansive FSC-certified tree plantations throughout the world, then I think it a good idea to try to store carbon as wood products, such as furniture, structural products, kitchenware, etc.
It is time to get over the feeling that cutting down a tree is bad. Reducing a forest is bad, but harvesting wood is not inherently wrong. The forests are huge carbon sinks, but they have a maximum capacity. At full development there is as much wood returning to the atmosphere as there is being removed.
Given that we are in a co2 crisis for at least this century, we need to remove carbon from the atmosphere, and that means maximising the sum of standing forest and human acumulated wood.
A long, nasty history tells us that taking wood has meant reducing forests, but it is pretty easy to see that we need to be taking as much wood as we can sustainably from as large a forest mass as we can. Harvesting and cherishing wood is an essential environmental policy.
We also need to stop grinding up long-lasting wood to make short-lived paper. And we need to ensure that when a given piece of wood reaches the end of it's useful life as solid wood that we recover the energy, replacing fossil fuels.
David