Identifying sustainable wood sources for the construction industry: a case study

Abstract

Wood is generally considered as a sustainable construction material. However, there are not sufficient wood resources in many countries or regions, especially those short of land resources. These countries and regions have to import wood from overseas. Therefore, it is imperative to determine how to choose sustainable importing sources in order to improve the sustainability performance of using wood in construction. This study compares the sustainability performance of wood imported from different regions by considering wood harvesting, manufacture, and transportation. A framework accounting energy consumption and CO₂ emissions is developed for sustainability assessment. The results show that importing wood from Canada, Australia, and New Zealand to Taiwan demands a relatively lower amount of energy than from other regions. Specifically, importing wood from Canada (West) demands the lowest amount of energy (2095 MJ/m³), while importing wood form Brazil consumes the highest amount of energy (5356 MJ/m³). In addition, findings showed that the CO₂ emissions generated from importing wood from Sweden are significant lower than those from other regions, although the energy consumed during the importing process is relatively high. The study also revealed that the wood manufacturing process and marine transportation contribute to the most energy consumption and CO₂ emissions among all importing processes analysed from most of studied regions.