Life cycle assessment and sustainability of underutilised wood streams

The climate crisis has intensified interest in wood-based construction as a strategy to reduce the carbon footprint of the built environment. However, the resulting increase in timber demand risks creating an overreliance on a limited number of commercially dominant wood species, raising concerns about biodiversity, forest resilience, and the balance between harvesting and regrowth. To ensure that wood construction genuinely contributes to climate mitigation, it is essential to diversify resource streams without increasing overall harvest pressure.

Underutilised wood streams (such as hardwood species, post-consumer wood and non-stem components including bark and branches) offer a promising solution. Yet their integration into construction products is currently hindered by significant uncertainty. Existing assessments often rely on generic wood property data and simplified representations of forest regrowth, overlooking critical differences across climatic zones, species, and biomass components. As a result, the true climate mitigation potential of these underutilised resources remains insufficiently understood and undervalued.

Within the Horizon Europe WoodStock project, this research addresses these gaps by developing a novel dynamic life cycle assessment (LCA) framework. This approach captures temporal dynamics in carbon flows and incorporates detailed, context-specific data on forest growth and species characteristics. By improving the accuracy of climate impact assessments, the project aims to unlock the potential of underutilised wood streams and support more sustainable, resilient wood-based construction systems.

Project Info

Research group: Building Physics
Duration: from 01-04-2025 to 31-03-2029
Researcher: David von Dufving
Academic supervisors: Marijke Steeman and Liselotte De Ligne