Why current carbon metrics for buildings fail to show the benefits of timber reuse

Wood sequester carbon, requires low energy from sourcing to its transformation into building component. An extension of the lifetime of a wood product through Circular Economy (CE) allows incrementing its environmental benefits: it postpones the release of the carbon sequestered into its fibres and avoids sourcing of new material and the impact on forestry [1]. Despite wood being reusable/recyclable, there exists several barriers, which often leads to the lowest level of repurposing, such as the reduction into a particle-based wood product, or into energy. In this paper we focus on the lack of incentives in current regulations in favour of the reuse of timber products in buildings, by introducing the concept of “utility value”, linking the functional reuse of timber products to its beneficial environmental effects beyond the building system level.