Sustainable Wood Buildings May Be the Next Frontier for Carbon Offsets
A pilot project at the University of Washington sold offsets against the carbon stored in the structure of a new campus building.
Founders Hall, at the University of Washington’s Foster School of Business, is estimated to have a carbon footprint one-quarter the size of a conventional concrete building’s thanks in large part to its mass timber structure. The building was designed by LMN Architects.
Photographer: Tim Griffith
This article is part of the Bloomberg Green series Timber Town , which looks at the global rise of timber as a low-carbon building material.
The University of Washington’s Founders Hall, which opened last year, is unlike any other building on the Seattle campus. Its beams, columns and central staircase are awash in warm hues thanks to the main construction material used: a strong engineered wood called mass timber. The bones of the new building lock in carbon dioxide digested by Pacific Northwest trees, and they should keep it out of the atmosphere for decades or longer.