Project contact is Paulo Tabares at the Colorado School of Mines (United States)
Summary
Cross Laminated Timber (CLT) is a mass timber material that has the potential to expand the wood building market in the U.S. However, new sustainable building technologies need extensive field and numerical validation quantifying environmental and economic benefits of using CLT as a sustainable building material so it can be broadly adopted in the building community. These benefits will also be projected nationwide across the United States once state-of-the-art software is validated and will include showcasing and documenting synergies between multiple technologies in the building envelope and heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) systems. However, there are no such studies for CLT. The objective of this project is to quantify and showcase environmental and economic benefits of CLT as a sustainable building material in actual (and simulated) commercial buildings across the entire United States by doing: (1) on-site monitoring of at least four CLT buildings, (2) whole building energy model validation, (3) optimization of the performance and design for CLT buildings and (4) comparison with traditional building envelopes. This knowledge gap needs to be filled to position CLT on competitive grounds with steel and concrete and is the motivation for this study.
The objective of this project was to quantify and compare the environmental impacts associated with alternative designs for a typical North American mid-rise office building. Two scenarios were considered; a traditional cast-in-place, reinforced concrete frame and a laminated timber hybrid design, which utilized engineered wood products (cross-laminated timber (CLT) and glulam). The boundary of the quantitative analysis was cradle-to-construction site gate and encompassed the structural support system and the building enclosure. Floor plans, elevations, material quantities, and structural loads associated with a five-storey concrete-framed building design were obtained from issued-for-construction drawings. A functionally equivalent, laminated timber hybrid design was conceived, based on Canadian Building Code requirements. Design values for locally produced CLT panels were established from in-house material testing. Primary data collected from a pilot-scale manufacturing facility was used to develop the life cycle inventory for CLT, whereas secondary sources were referenced for other construction materials. The TRACI characterization methodology was employed to translate inventory flows into impact indicators. The results indicated that the laminated timber building design offered a lower environmental impact in 10 of 11 assessment categories. The cradle-to-gate process energy was found to be nearly identical in both design scenarios (3.5 GJ/m2), whereas the cumulative embodied energy (feedstock plus process) of construction materials was estimated to be 8.2 and 4.6 GJ/m2 for the timber and concrete designs, respectively; which indicated an increased availability of readily accessible potential energy stored within the building materials of the timber alternative.
Tall building (higher than 8 stories) construction using Cross laminated timber (CLT) is a relatively new trend for urban developments around the world. In the U.S., there is great interest in utilizing the potential of this new construction material. By analyzing a ten-story condominium building model constructed using building energy simulation program EnergyPlus, the energy efficiency of this emerging building type was evaluated and compared with a light metal frame building system (currently viable construction type for this height based on the U.S. building code). A sensitivity analysis was also conducted to study the impact of different weather and internal load conditions on building energy performances. It was concluded that efficiency of CLT envelope is high for heating energy savings, but its energy performance efficiency can be greatly affected by other factors including weather, internal loading, and HVAC control.
This study conducted a consequential Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) on two similar mid-rise apartment buildings applying either concrete or cross laminated timber (CLT) as the main structural material. The study further investigated inclusion of biogenic carbon and how this affects environmental impacts related to Global warming. Thus, two assessment scenarios were applied: A Base scenario, without accounting for biogenic carbon and a Biogenic carbon scenario that include a GWPbio factor to account for the use of biogenic carbon. The CLT building had the lowest impact score in 11 of 18 impact categories including Global warming. Operational energy use was the main contributor to the total impact with some variation across impact scores, but closely followed by impacts embodied in materials (incl. End-of-Life). An evaluation of the potential forest transformations required for fulfilling future projections for new building construction in 2060 showed that about 3% of current global forest area would be needed. This share was essentially independent of the selected building material as the main driver for forest transformation was found to be energy use during building operation. Thus, focus should primarily be on reducing deforestation related to energy generation rather than deforestation from production of building materials.
This study compares the life cycle environmental impacts of two multilevel residential buildings built in Melbourne, Australia. The study was commissioned by Australand and funded by Forest and Wood Products Australia (FWPA).
The first building considered, the ‘Study Building’, incorporated an innovative light weight building approach utilising a stick-built timber frame and a ‘cassette floor’ building system. The second building, the ‘Reference Building’ utilised a more typical building approach, incorporating precast concrete panels and suspended concrete slab floors (Table 1).
The primary goal of the study was to compare the potential environmental impacts of the above buildings across their respective life cycles.
The study employed the LCA methodology described by the ISO14044 standard to undertake the comparison of the buildings. The analysis addressed a building life cycle scope which was prescribed by GBCA (GBCA 2014), which in turn based the boundary definition on the EN15978 standard, as shown in Figure 1. Although EN15978 was used to define the scope of the LCA, the study is not intended to be fully compliant with the standard.
Cross Laminated Timber (CLT), which is made by laminating dimension lumber at right angles, is an innovative high-performance building material that offers many positive attributes including renewability, high structural stability, storage of carbon during the building life, good fire resistance, possibility of material recycling and reuse. It is conceptually a sustainable and cost effective structural timber solution that can compete with concrete in non-residential and multi-family mid-rise building market. Therefore, there is a need to understand and quantify the environmental attribute of this building system in the context of North American resources, manufacturing technology, energy constraints, building types, and construction practice. This study is to compare energy consumption of two building designs using different materials, i.e. CLT and concrete.
The designs were based on a five-storey office building, Discovery Place-Building 12, which is located in Burnaby, British Columbia, at 4200 Canada Way. The existing building was built with reinforced concrete. Embodied energy was calculated based on the total amount of material required for each of the building systems. Operational energy was calculated using eQUEST, an energy usage modeling software tool. The environmental impacts of the buildings were evaluated by comparing the total energy consumption through the building life.
CLT has lower non-renewable energy consumption compared to concrete in terms of material acquisition, manufacturing and transportation. Previous studies shew that operational energy accounts for the main amount of total energy use in buildings during their service life. Hence, the importance of embodied energy increases by reducing operational energy consumption. CLT has lower embodied energy compared to concrete. Therefore, the advantage of using CLT as a construction material is becoming greater by designing low energy or passive buildings.
The largest source of energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions in Canada and around the world is buildings. As a consequence, building designers are encouraged to adopt designs that reduce operational energy, through both increasingly stringent energy codes and voluntary green building programs that go beyond code requirements. Among structural building materials, wood has by far the lowest heat conductivity. As a result it is typically easier to meet certain insulation targets (e.g., thermal transmission and effective thermal resistance) with wood-based wall systems when following current construction practices. Good envelopes greatly contribute to energy efficient buildings. However, there are many factors in addition to building envelope insulation levels that affect the operational energy of a building. This study aims to provide designers with information which will assist them to choose energy efficient exterior wall systems by providing energy consumption estimates for an archetypal 6-storey residential building. Comparisons were made among several exterior wall systems including light wood-framing, cross-laminated timber (CLT), steel-stud framing, and window walls, for a range of structural systems including structural steel, light wood-frame, CLT, heavy timber, and concrete. The opaque exterior wall assemblies targeted meeting the minimum thermal requirements based on the National Energy Code of Canada for Buildings (NECB. NRC 2011). A 3-D method was used to calculate effective R-values of these exterior walls by taking into account all thermal bridging, in comparison with a parallel-path flow method in compliance with the NECB. Three glazing ratios, including 30%, 50%, and 70%, and two efficiency levels for Heating, Ventilation, & Air Conditioning (HVAC) systems, termed basic HVAC and advanced HVAC, were also assessed. Whole-building energy consumption was simulated using EnergyPlus. Four climates, from Zone 4 to Zone 7, with cities of Vancouver, Toronto, Ottawa, and Edmonton to represent each climate, were selected in this study. The energy assessment was conducted by Morrison Hershfield.
A Comparison of the Energy Saving and Carbon Reduction Performance between Reinforced Concrete and Cross-Laminated Timber Structures in Residential Buildings in the Severe Cold Region of China
This paper aims to investigate the energy saving and carbon reduction performance of cross-laminated timber residential buildings in the severe cold region of China through a computational simulation approach. The authors selected Harbin as the simulation environment, designed reference residential buildings with different storeys which were constructed using reinforced concrete (RC) and cross-laminated timber (CLT) systems, then simulated the energy performance using the commercial software IESTM and finally made comparisions between the RC and CLT buildings. The results show that the estimated energy consumption and carbon emissions for CLT buildings are 9.9% and 13.2% lower than those of RC buildings in view of life-cycle assessment. This indicates that the CLT construction system has good potential for energy saving when compared to RC in the severe cold region of China. The energy efficiency of residential buildings is closely related to the height for both RC and CLT buildings. In spite of the higher cost of materials for high-rise buildings, both RC and CLT tall residential buildings have better energy efficiency than low-rise and mid-rise buildings in the severe cold region of China.
Does it really cost more to build a high-performance building? Historically, this question has been addressed with theoretical studies based on varying the design of common building archetypes, but nothing beats the real thing. ZEBx, in partnership with BTY Group and seven builders from across BC, has completed a cost analysis of seven high-performance, wood-framed, mid-rise, multi-unit residential buildings that meet Step 4 of the Energy Step Code or the Passive House standard. The results of the study may surprise you!
Project contact is Eric Wood at Morrison Hershfield (Canada)
Summary
The project develops building archetypes, cost data and energy modelling to allow users to cost out mass timber buildings from basic, code-compliant buildings to high-performing, energy-efficient, low-emitting buildings. It will help quantity surveyors, designers, and other decisionmakers undertake business-case development by clarifying cost variables associated with mass-timber construction.
