Building new homes out of wood instead of steel and concrete to create “timber cities” could avoid more than 100bn tonnes of CO2 being emitted over the next 80 years, and help avoid climate catastrophe, a study has revealed
The emissions savings from a wide-scale adoption of wood as a construction material in cities would account for around 10% of the world’s remaining carbon budget, according to a study by the Potsdam Institute for Climate Research (PIK).
The study is the first to analyse the impacts of a large-scale transition to timber cities on land use, land-use change emissions, and long-term carbon storage in harvested wood products.
“More than half the world’s population currently lives in cities, and by 2100 this number will increase significantly,” said Abhijeet Mishra, a scientist at PIK.
