NAFI

Review National Association of Forest Industries Ltd

Timber as a Building Material -

An environmental comparison against
synthetic building materials

By Phil Townsend and Chris Wagner

SYNOPSIS

This paper is an introduction to the use of sustainable timber

products and how they compare to the use of synthetic materials
such as steel and aluminum, for building purposes.
The paper focuses on the Life Cycle Assessment approach to
building materials, exploring indicators and actual comparisons
between wood and others.
The results of a study conducted in Germany for the Food and
Agricultural Organisation, clearly demonstrate that wood is the
superior building material on environmental cirteria.

Timber as an Environmentally Superior Building Material

INTRODUCTION
Wood has been used throughout the history of mankind. From the very first housing, bridges
and tools, timber has provided humans with a broad range of building products and materials for
construction. However, with the modernisation of the construction industry and efforts to minimise
costs, new construction materials have come to the fore. Synthetic products such as concrete and
steel have redefined the construction industry.
However, just how effective are these alternative materials, especially in regards to their overall
environmental impact. Each type of building material has a different ‘embodied energy’. ‘Embodied
energy’ is the amount of energy used to fabricate particular building materials, and is calculated in
MJ/m2 (Mega Joule per Meters Squared).
It is imperative to note that the following results are based on Australian materials and environmental
conditions.

EMBODIED ENERGY
The following tables represent the indicative Embodied Energy values for common building
materials, in four different construction areas; floors, walls, windows and roofs.
TABLE 0.1 — FLOORS (INCLUDING FLOORING, FRAMING, FOOTING ETC.)

Timber suspended, timber sub-floor enclosure 740 MJ/m2

Timber suspended, brick sub-floor wall 1050 MJ/m2

Concrete slab on ground 1235 MJ/m2

TABLE 0.2 — WALLS (INCLUDING FRAMING, INTERNAL LINING, INSULATION ETC.)

Weather board, timber frame 410 MJ/m2

Brick veneer, timber frame 1060 MJ/m2

Double brick 1975 MJ/m2

TABLE 0.3 — WINDOWS (INCLUDING 3MM GLASS)

Timber frame 880 MJ/m2

Aluminum frame 1595 MJ/m2

TABLE 0.4; — ROOFS (INCLUDING PLASTERBOARD CEILING, R2.5 INSULATION, GUTTERS ETC.)

Concrete tile, timber frame 755 MJ/m2

Concrete tile, steel frame 870 MJ/m2

Metal cladding, timber frame 1080 MJ/m2

Clay tile, timber frame 1465 MJ/m2

(Tables 0.1 – 0.4 sourced from National Timber Development Council, 2001, Environmentally Friendly Housing using Timber – Principles, p10)

While this approach considers the energy consumed during the production of building components,

Timber as an Environmentally Superior Building Material

consideration must be made to the amount of carbon released in the manufacture of building
materials compared to the amount stored in the material itself. Demonstration of these comparisons
and environmental advantages of wood over other synthetics are recorded in Table 0.5 below.
TABLE 0.5

Material Carbon released (kg/m3) Carbon stored (kg/m3)

Sawn timber 15 250

Steel 5320 0

Concrete 120 0

Aluminum 22000 0

(Sourced from Forests & Wood Products Research and Development Corporation, (1997) Environmental Properties of Timber, p5)

Further details of the energy efficiency ratings of various roof/ceiling, wall and flooring construction
elements are available online at www.timber.org, the authoritative report entitled “R-values”.

LIFE CYCLE ANALYSIS

From the resources used as inputs for manufacturing, to their use in construction and through to
the ‘death’ of the product, a new scientific assessment process has been developed. This process is
called “Life Cycle Assessment or Analysis” (LCA).
The LCA approach balances a range of factors
• Forest utilization
• The generation of by-products
• Disposal of waste
• Resource depletion
• Global Warming
• Landfill
• Ozone hole extension
• Eutrophication (the growth of water based life forms)
• Synthesis of compounds responsible for acid rain
LCA is important, because if valid assessment is to be made then the environmental impacts of a
product must be assessed during all stages of the life cycle of the building material. This entails
assessing procedures such as product manufacturing, CO2 emissions, transport and maintenance.
Therefore, a ‘cradle to grave’ approach is used to assess the life long impacts of the materials use.
The basis for providing LCA results are,
• To assist government decision making in regards to resource use, availability and industry
support policies;
• To assist long-term strategic planning for the industry, in terms of potential market drivers;

Timber as an Environmentally Superior Building Material

 • To assist with product design or identifying improvements in the environmental aspects of the
building material manufacturing process;
• To market wood as an environmentally sustainable and competitive resource; and
• To improve the recognition of wood as an environmentally superior building product
throughout the value chain.

THE FAO REPORT

This paper explores the findings of a report prepared for the Forestry Products Division, of the Food
and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nationals (FAO, 2002) in Germany. The report provides
a summary of recent studies on LCA according to the standard ISO 14040. The Standard requires
that the goal and scope be clearly defined at the beginning of all LCA studies. Additionally, the
standard also requires that building and construction materials be compared on the basis of using
the same functional units of measurement.
The report was designed to compare the ecological benefits of using wood based products in house
construction in comparison to synthetic materials. A ‘cradle to grave’ life cycle assessment of
building products indicates the environmental advantages of wood over concrete, steel, synthetics,
ceramics and glass.
Results of identified environmental advantages of using wood-based products for construction
purposes over a number of building alternatives were obtained from the GaBi 3.0 software program
(IKP, 1999) to provide a set of key indicators, as follows:
• Global Warming Potential (GWP) in kg CO2 equivalents.
• Acidification Potential (AP) in kg SO2 equivalents.
• Eutrophication Potential (EP) in kg phosphate equivalents.
• Photochemical Ozone Creation Potential (POCP) in kg Ethene equivalent.
Although the report is not based on the Australian forestry and building industry, it does indicate
the potential environmental benefits that could be obtained from a greater utilisation of timber and
wood-based products in the international construction industry. As the sustainability indicies for
Australia’s building industries are developed, the research outcomes will be made available through
the NAFI web-site www.nafi.com.au.
Net benefits from timber become even greater when the proper thermal utilisation of waste or scrap
wood is included as part of the ongoing LCA process.
Environmental and energy balances were used as the key indicators to compare the lifetime impacts
of using various building products through practical applications, of the following dwellings:
• Single family housing
• Simple large building
• Sheds
• Window frames
• Flooring materials

Timber as an Environmentally Superior Building Material

RESULTS

Single family house (80 year life-span)

Two different forms of house construction were compared in this study – timber frame and brick.
Importantly both houses were designed with approximately the same heat transition co-efficient
(K-Value)
Life cycle inventory of inputs to build the houses
Timber frame 34 250 kWh
Brick House 41 100 kWh

(Sourced from FAO, 2002, Environmental and Energy Balances of Wood Products and Substitutes p17-18)

Examples of what timber and forestry residues and by-products are derived from are: thinning and
harvesting operations, sawmill residues, furniture production, building site rubbish, timber from
demolition and waste paper for recycling.
For the life cycle assessment, the report’s authors (from the University of Hamburg) investigated the
thermal utilisation of forestry, processing, and end of life cycle wood waste for wood generation.
The comparisons between timber and brick can be seen in Tables 1.1 and 1.2.
A key finding is that increasing the proportion of timber used in a single-dwelling construction
reduces the environmental impacts for all the indicators and is further enhanced when the thermal
utilisation of wood is considered (see tables 1.1 and 1.2).
TABLE 1.1 — ZERO THERMAL UTILISATION OF WOOD WASTE
Timber Frame Brick

GWP 94 852 114 980

AP 212 256

EP 18 22

POCP 5 7

TABLE 1.2 — WITH THERMAL UTILISATION OF WOOD WASTE

Timber Frame Brick

GWP 79 248 108 400

AP 177 242

EP 15 21

POCP 5 6

(Tables 1.1 & 1.2 sourced from FAO, 2002, Environmental and Energy Balances of Wood Products and Substitutes p18-19)

Further information on the LCA of houses can be found in the National Timber Development
Council’s (NTDC) publication “Environmentally Friendly Housing using Timber” (2001). The
NTDC publication describes the LCA of different houses and includes an indication of the total CO2
emissions based on various forms of heating and cooling.

Timber as an Environmentally Superior Building Material

Comparison of three-story buildings
These tables display the difference between building two three-story buildings, both constructed
over and area of 9 750m2, with different materials. The buildings were;
• Building 1, made from 1 000t wood + 60t steel; and
• Building 2, made from steel only.
TABLE 2.1 — NO THERMAL UTILISATION OF WOOD WASTE

Building 1 Building 2

GWP 1.1m 3.4m

AP 2 445 7 613

EP 208 648

POCP 63 196

TABLE 2.2 WITH THERMAL UTILISATION OF WOOD WASTE

Building 1 Building 2

GWP - 1.5m 3.4m

AP - 3 264 7 613

EP - 278 648

POCP - 84 196

(Tables 2.1 & 2.2 sourced from FAO, 2002, Environmental and Energy Balances of Wood Products and Substitutes p23-24)

The above data from the comparison of the two multi-story building constructions clearly
demonstrates the environmental benefits for timber over the use of steel.

Sheds constructed out of wood, steel and concrete

A comparison was made of basic shed construction using three different materials, over the same
sized area incorporating the following factors;
• Covered area of 1000m2 and an average height of 6m.
• Impacts include the cost associated with demolition plus production, transportation and
operation over a twenty-year period.
• Assume thermal utilisation of the wood by-product.
TABLE 3.1 COMPARISONS OF SHED CONSTRUCTION LCA
Wood Steel Concrete

GWP 0.8m 1.3m 1.6m

AP 1849 2946 3582

EP 158 250 305

POCP 48 76 92

(Table 3.1 sourced from FAO, 2002, Environmental and Energy Balances of Wood Products and Substitutes p25-29)

Again, the research clearly demonstrates that wood is a more efficient building product in
environmental terms, than synthetic equivalents, when the full LCA is undertaken on the building

Timber as an Environmentally Superior Building Material

structures and thermal utilisation of wood by-product is obtained.

Comparisons of LCA in Aluminum, PVC and wooden window frames

The comparisons are as follows (assuming thermal utilisation of wood by-products)
• Including the production of two-wing windows (1650mm by 1300mm)
• Including a lifetime of 30 years
TABLE 4.1 COMPARISONS OF WINDOW FRAME BUILDING MATERIALS IN TERMS OF LCA
Aluminum PVC Wood

GWP 1089 996 906

AP 5.1 4.6 2.2

EP 0.3 0.3 0.2

POCP 2.3 2.7 1.6

(Table 4.1 sourced from FAO, 2002, Environmental and Energy Balances of Wood Products and Substitutes p35-36)

Wood returned the best results once again. Most interesting is the extreme difference between the
Acidification Potential (AP) of Aluminum and PVC, and that of wood. While other indicators do
not have a large disparity the AP indicators for materials other than wood are more than double the
figures of timber.

LCA of flooring materials, wood, PVC and Lino

NB::
• Lino includes wood and cork
• PVC contains chlorine and ethylene
• Functional units = 1 m2
• Results take into account varying product lifetimes (lino = 25 years, PVC = 20 years, solid wood
= 40 years)
Results are as follows,
TABLE 5.1— LCA OF FLOORING PRODUCTS
Lino Vinyl Wood

GWP 1600 4174 424

AP 13 31 24

EP 2 1 4

POCP 2 1 0

(Table 5.1 sourced from FAO, 2002, Environmental and Energy Balances of Wood Products and Substitutes p45-47)

Table 5.1 above indicates that in this instance, lino has the best LCA

Timber as an Environmentally Superior Building Material

CONCLUSION
There is potential in the future to use the results of LCA cradle to grave analysis to provide
sustainability ratings on dwellings similar to the Energy Efficiency Ratings that currently apply on
such items as household white goods.
Timber should be the preferred building product on environmental grounds across the life of the
various building products. To demonstrate the difference between wood and other building products
it is essential to take into account thermal utilisation of wood waste. Therefore it is critical that the
Renewable Energy Regulations support the use of wood waste as an effective and efficient bio-
energy resource.
The LCA work is starting to be combined with information about the nature and source of
manufacturing inputs as the basis for developing sustainability indicies. On these grounds there may
be an ideal opportunity for the timber industry to regain lost markets or to address new markets in
the building industry. Identification of innovative building designs and new applications for timber
as a construction material for the future must include the combination the outputs of cradle to grave
or even cradle to cradle LCA research with cost analysis to increase the use of timber products in
construction.

REFERENCES
FAO (2002) Environmental and Energy Balances of Wood Products and Substitutes. Rome: FAO
Forest & Wood Products Development Corporation (1997) Environmental Properties of Timber.
NSW: FWPRDC
National Timber Development Council (2001) Environmentally Friendly housing using Timber.
NSW: FWPRDC

Timber as an Environmentally Superior Building Material