Building cities with wood would store half of cement industry's current carbon emissions

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• The results show that if 80 percent of new residential buildings in Europe were made of wood, and wood were used in the structures, cladding, surfaces, and furnishings of houses, all together the buildings would store 55 million tons of carbon dioxide a year. That is equivalent to about 47 percent of the annual emissions of Europe's cement industry.

• Aalto University and the Finnish Environment Institute

• Drawing on 50 case studies, the researchers divided buildings into three groups according to how much wood they use and, as a consequence, how much carbon dioxide they store.

• The potential carbon storage capacity was not generally related to building or wood type, or even its size; rather, capacity is based on the number and volume of wood used as building components, from beams and columns to walls and finishings.