Timber cities could hold key to sustainable future

Conducted by scientists at Germany’s Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK), the study used computer simulations to analyse the impacts of a large-scale transition to timber cities on land use, land-use change emissions, and long-term carbon storage in harvested wood products. It found that if 90 per cent of growing urban populations were housed in newly built timber mid-rise buildings, 106Gt of additional CO₂ could be saved by 2100 – roughly 10 per cent of the remaining carbon budget to limit warming to 2°C. The research is published in Nature Communications.

"More than half the world’s population currently lives in cities, and by 2100 this number will increase significantly. This means more homes will be built with steel and concrete, most of which have a serious carbon footprint," said lead author Abhijeet Mishra, a scientist from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK). "But we have an alternative: we can house the new urban population in mid-rise buildings – that is 4 to 12 stories – made out of wood."