Building Engineer June 2020

JUNE 2020

INTELLIGENCE

BUILDING ENGINEER

14

To the lighthouse Stora Enso’s LightHouse project in Joensuu shines a light on the use of wood to reduce the construction industry’s CO2 emissions

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f the building sector is to truly change to meet the decarbonisation goals of the Paris Agreement, both operational and embodied emissions need to be addressed. There must be greater scrutiny of how buildings can be made more sustainable in all stages of their lifecycle – including material choice.

This is the message from the World Green Building Council (WGBC), an international organisation dedicated to promoting the practice of sustainable building. Its report Bringing embodied carbon upfront highlights the importance of emissions from materials, and it advocates for new policies – such as the EU’s Level(s) framework – that seek to make a building’s lifecycle assessment mainstream.

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As members of WGBC, Stora Enso is keen to increase the knowledge about sustainable construction and construction materials, and believes that timber offers a solution.

“We need to change the raw materials we are constructing with,” says Jari Suominen, Head of Stora Enso’s wood products division. “Timber has everything. It has a low-carbon footprint due to the relatively low greenhouse gas emissions in production, it stores carbon throughout its lifetime, our sustainably sourced wood is renewable and at the very end of its lifecycle, and wood products can be safely converted into renewable bioenergy without becoming waste,” he says.

18/05/2020 11:02