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Environmental impacts of cross-laminated timber production in Japan

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Abstract

Japan has promoted a policy to use lumber in various types of buildings since 2010. As cross-laminated timber (CLT) is one of the engineered timber products, an amount of CLT production has been increasing in Japan under this policy. The purpose of this study is to produce generic life cycle assessment data for CLT production in Japan and to propose measures for reducing environmental impacts of CLT production. The system boundary includes from material production to CLT production (cradle-to-gate). The operational data at three major Japanese companies are collected in the fiscal year of 2018. The evaluated environmental impact categories are climate change, ozone layer depletion, eutrophication, acidification, photochemical oxidant, land occupation, and land transformation. The results show that electricity used in wood laminae production had the largest impact to climate change and the roundwood production had the second largest. The sensitivity analysis clarified that the use of fossil fuels during the drying process greatly increased CLT’s environmental impacts. The policies to promote the introduction of biomass boilers for sawmills are appropriate for reducing environmental impacts. If CLT is used for more than 30 years, greenhouse gas reduction due to temporary carbon storage will be greater than that of the CLT production. It is also recommended to extend the life of buildings using CLT and/or to use CLT for a long time through the reuse of CLT panels to avoid releasing biogenic carbon to the atmosphere.

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Availability of data and materials

The datasets generated during and/or analyzed during the current study are not publicly available due to an inclusion of individual companies’ confidential data but are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

Abbreviations

CLT:

Cross-laminated timber

EPD:

Environmental product declarations

GHG:

Greenhouse gas

HB:

Hard board

IB:

Insulation board

LCA:

Life cycle assessment

MAFF:

Ministry of agriculture, forestry and fisheries of Japan

MDF:

Medium density fiberboard

PB:

Particle board

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Acknowledgements

The authors thank the three companies that provided factory data for this study. We also thank Katsuji Ebisu in the Sustainable Management Promotion Organization who supported data reduction.

Funding

This research was partly supported by grants from the Project of the NARO Bio-oriented Technology Research Advancement Institution (the special project on vitalizing management entities of agriculture, forestry and fisheries).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Policy Science, Ritsumeikan University, 2-150 Iwakura-cho, Osaka, Ibaraki, 567-8570, Japan

    Katsuyuki Nakano

  2. Environmental Control Center Co. Ltd, 3-7-23 Sanda-Machi, Hachioji, Tokyo, 193-0832, Japan

    Wataru Koike

  3. Sustainable Management Promotion Organization (SuMPO), 2-2-1 Kaji-cho, Chiyoda, Tokyo, 101-0044, Japan

    Ken Yamagishi

  4. Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology, 3-5-8 Saiwai-cho, Fuchu, Tokyo, 183-8509, Japan

    Nobuaki Hattori

Authors
  1. Katsuyuki Nakano
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  2. Wataru Koike
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  3. Ken Yamagishi
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  4. Nobuaki Hattori
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Contributions

NH helped in conceptualization; KN contributed to methodology and formal analysis; WK and KY helped in investigation; KN contributed to writing—original draft preparation; NH helped in writing—review and editing and funding acquisition and supervision.

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Correspondence to Nobuaki Hattori.

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Nakano, K., Koike, W., Yamagishi, K. et al. Environmental impacts of cross-laminated timber production in Japan. Clean Techn Environ Policy 22, 2193–2205 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10098-020-01948-2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10098-020-01948-2

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