Carbon storage from building components

As the need to both mitigate against climate change and adapt to climate change-related impacts becomes more pressing, policy-makers, industry and other stakeholders are looking for innovative approaches to significantly reduce the operational and embodied greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from buildings. More extensive and innovative use of wood and other biobased materials as a substitute to high-carbon footprint products is a potential solution to meet these dual objectives.

The research project objective is to identify innovative wood and bio-based solutions in modular construction at the building component level that enhances performance and contribute to whole life carbon reduction in new and existing buildings. The innovative solution should consider functional equivalence across a range of performance criteria, including embodied energy and embodied carbon. The solutions must be scaleable to have an impact across the building stock, enabling long-term carbon storage in support of net-zero-carbon buildings. The PhD student will investigate the impact of system boundaries between the building and the forest activities using LCA and other tools. The LCA method and biogenic carbon traceability tools to assess the suitability of potential solutions to meet the carbon reduction targets must be compatible with Building Information Modelling (BIM) software, enable international comparison of results and facilitate eventual applications in practice and policy development.

The project is linked to the new IEA EBC Annex 89: Ways to implement net-zero whole life carbon buildings. Co-supervised by Prof Greg Foliente at the University of Melbourne in Australia who is also part of the IEA EBC Annex 89 leadership team, as an external supervisor, the PhD student will take part in the collaborative meeting and activities of the Annex.