Synthesis

Partners: EFI, BOKU, UL, NUIG, EFIATLANTIC, FCBA, LAMMC, SPBFTU, IVL

WP5 provides results of national and international interest such as experiences and recommendations for the use of the new benchmarking method, recommendations for the participating countries based on the case study findings and stakeholder interactions, as well as an assessment of how wood construction can contribute to the bioeconomy.

Recommendations and synthesis (Month 24-34)

Recommendation will be developed on the use of the developed benchmarking method and its indicators for each case country. In addition, guidelines for the wider application and use of the method (case independent) will be provided.

Assessment of wood construction contribution to circular bioeconomy (Month 10-36)

The project provides an overview of the realistic potential contribution of wood construction to the bioeconomy, using literature, EFISCEN model for resource availability and spreadsheet calculations to extrapolate from the cases to a national level. The aim

is to help decision-makers evaluate their decisions in terms of the scale and nature of the impacts that the single decisions may have for the overall development of the bioeconomy. In other words, while the single cases (WP4) provide concrete advice for a person or an organization investing in a building, the synthesis WP may help in establishing the relative environmental (and possibly social) significance of the single decisions on a national (and to some extent European) scale. This involves analysing, to which extent wood-based building practices could realistically substitute the most common conventional building practices in the case countries and on which time scale. The question can also be asked the other way around: What would be the situation (in terms of CO2 emissions etc.), if no wood would be used, compared to the current situation? This analysis facilitates in evaluating the results of the case studies, in terms of how does the system boundary definition affect the conclusions in terms of the contribution of wood construction to bioeconomy? The results are also mirrored to the criteria reviewed in WP2 to find out with which criteria the wood construction solutions seem to contribute to bioeconomy the most, and reversely, for which sustainability issues there is a need to find further solutions.

The task will conduct a literature review on the relevance of wood construction for the bioeconomy, analysing drivers and barriers for wider use of wood construction. Based on this, the cases will be extrapolated to a national level, using spreadsheet calculations and publically available data (national statistics databases, Eurostat, World Bank, etc.) on e.g. wood use coefficients, construction activity, size of apartments, etc. By altering the assumptions, basic sensitivity analysis will be carried out to estimate the uncertainties of the assessment.  However, their full impacts cannot be formally considered within this framework, as, e.g., studying the possible diffusion of other material and process innovations in the construction sector is beyond the scope of this study.

Milestones and Deliverables

D5.1 Report / manuscript on the potential contribution of wood construction to national bioeconomies (M34)
D5.2 Policy brief on the main findings and suggestions of the project (M35)
D5.3 Final BenchValue Conference with wide stakeholder participation (M35)
M5.1 Literature review on the relevance of wood construction to bioeconomy: SWOT analysis on the wood construction market (M24)
M5.2 Spreadsheet calculations and sensitivity analysis: Min, max and moderate scenarios (M30)