“Michael Roddy describes the ecological costs in terms of CO2 emmissions related to choices that builders make when they choose what materials they will build with.” This page has the link to the Roddy’s 10 page PDF.
Excerpts:
…wood framed houses do not last beyond two or three generations without requiring extensive maintenance. In many cases, 60 year old houses are torn down, resulting in sending all of the other homebuilding elements to a landfill as well. Cheap wood, however, has had the effect of perpetuating lumber dominance in the home construction industry, a habit shared by only a handful of other countries. Having built housing on other continents, I can attest to the fact that people from overseas are puzzled about our habit of building houses that are disposable consumer products. A steel stud, by contrast, has been shown by laboratory tests to last for over 600 years in a wall framing application, and after that time it can be fully recycled. Sadly, builders are not much concerned about wood framed houses that begin to deteriorate in a few decades, because their financial responsibility has long since ceased. Only the public can effect a change in the quality of house framing.
Substitution of steel for lumber in a house framing application would result in a major reduction in America’s CO2 emissions. The data show that harvesting wood for housing produces over seven times the greenhouse gas emissions of steel. Even better, switching to steel in all new residential construction would have 2.9 times the positive impact on the US CO2 emissions budget by requiring every new car and light truck sold to be a hybrid or other technology that doubled gas mileage.
In order to understand the full scale of US timber industry CO2 emissions, it is useful to first look at the global picture. In spite of our having only 2% of the world’s remaining frontier forests, and 6.6% of the planet’s woody biomass, the US produces 18% of the world’s industrial roundwood, or raw timber harvest. Even more startling, we consume 27% of the planet’s wood products, more than the total for the four billion people who live in Asia.
Life cycle analysis done by a consortium of research institutions confirm EXACTLY THE OPPOSITE of the claims made above. Greenhouse gas emissions are significantly higher in steel frame structures than using wood frame construction. Refer to the scientific results here:
http://www.corrim.org/factsheets/fs_02/index.asp
Steel frame houses produce between 26% and 31% HIGHER levels of CO2 emissions in the residential homes modeled.
David,
The fact sheet you point to does have different results that in the Roddy paper above. But also it doesn’t have any references. Can you point to the actual research?
I asked Mike Roddy to comment and received this reply: