Creating clean energy hubs in communities across the world.
While sustainable forest management (FSC or PEFC) is the best tool available to ensure a reasonable exploitation of timber, these certifications aren’t perfect.Natural forests are complex biodiverse ecosystems that capture carbon, not just in trees but also within soil.
A ‘tree plantation’ unlike a forest, may not enhance biodiversity and may have a reduced capacity to store carbon in the soil.. One major risk related to carbon accounting and forest management is that Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs) may not adequately account for the carbon released from decaying root net and from the soil when cutting trees.This can be largely underestimated for most timber products.. We must also acknowledge that sustainable foresting cannot produce enough timber to respond to global construction needs.Engineered timber cannot substitute or offset the use of concrete and steel but its use should be prioritised in the right type of buildings.. Our response is to:.
- Ensure timber specified is of a sustainable nature, by using PEFC or FSC certification schemes.. - Have a critical view about sustainable forest management and explore alternatives.. - Interrogate timber manufacturers on their root and soil carbon accounting.. Acoustic performance.When designing with engineered timber special attention is required to reduce vibrations, noise transmission and reverberation time..
The layered nature of engineered timber can improve acoustic compartmentation and if properly designed, does not need the same mass as concrete to achieve the same airborne sound resistance.
However, detailing is the main challenge and if not properly resolved it can generate sound flanking at the joints which is difficult to resolve without the use of wet trades.The improvement in producing ‘green hydrogen’ through the electrolysis of water is helping increase the benefits of CCU by reducing the industry’s demand for electricity in producing some chemicals.
Hydrogen is required to produce ammonia, for example, an important material in many plastic production processes.The benefit of water electrolysis is that it uses 7.5% less electricity than other methods.
‘Black hydrogen’ is hydrogen produced using natural gas (methane) that is reacted with steam in a steam reformer, and ‘blue hydrogen’ uses carbon capture during the same process to reuse some of the carbon.Even with carbon capture, blue hydrogen still uses fossil fuels, so in some instances carbon capture needs to be used effectively.