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Comment by musingsole | Hacker News Reader

> The carbon sequestered by the trees is now in the building materials

You're ignoring material waste. This process doesn't consume 100% of the tree; only a portion of the tree's carbon is sequestered into the building. The rest is rotting.

> The space the trees were in will now have more trees grown in them.

Trees are renewable, but it's not quite "copy&paste". Further, the harvesting of the trees was certain to be carbon intensive.

So, on the whole, you can trust this process IS NOT CARBON NEGATIVE.

What it may be is LESS CARBON INTENSIVE than a traditional process. They are VERY FAR from crossing the neutral line and yet are trying to claim carbon negative? That's pretty brash.

Does the objection make more sense now?

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Despite the all caps, your objections still don't make that much sense.

> You're ignoring material waste. This process doesn't consume 100% of the tree; only a portion of the tree's carbon is sequestered into the building. The rest is rotting.

It's ply. Apart from the root system, it's quite close to 100% indeed.

> Trees are renewable, but it's not quite "copy&paste". Further, the harvesting of the trees was certain to be carbon intensive.

Tree harvesting is pretty much fine. Transport is what pollutes the most here. The new growing trees are carbon sinks. It's not a question of renewability. It's just that you used to have CO2 in the air and now it's a house. Processing will mostly use electricity so it depends of how your local electricity is produced of course.

> They are VERY FAR from crossing the neutral line

They are probably not very far. It's not an heavily mechanised project. Assembly is mostly done by hand. Considering the amount they sequester, being neutral is not that far fetched.

> It's just that you used to have CO2 in the air and now it's a house.

I disagree on your accounting (largely because the house is torn down one day and further a CNC throws wood dust everywhere and this project requires one front and center), but none of that matters. Carbon negative is a strong claim that requires strong evidence. Of which, none has been offered.

> "The rest is rotting"

Is it, though? Because operations I've been to use every last available ounce of the tree. Trunk and limbs are sawn, small limbs, branches, bark, and offcuts are ground for biomass heating. Yes, it's burnt, but releasing no more carbon than it captured in its lifecycle and to provide a tangible end result that would otherwise be achieved with fossil fuels.

Root stumps rot, yes, but providing a breeding ground for insects and hence birds and small mammals and hence predators. They also fix soil beneficial bacteria and fungi, and having spent all their energy breaking up the soil and then breaking down they prepare the best soil bed for the new tree to take its place and sequester more carbon.

It's not the perfect process, by any means, but wood as a building material is infinitely more sustainable than concrete, gypsum and stone.

> It's not the perfect process, by any means, but wood as a building material is infinitely more sustainable than concrete, gypsum and stone.

Cool, show me the part where any of that means this company has a right to claim carbon negative?

Onus isn't on me here.

That's not what I said.

I just pointed out that your emotional response that backs your argument isn't necessarily reflective of what actually happens.

Well put. If they just would say "less carbon intensive than using concrete or bricks", I would buy it. But carbon negative is just a straight up lie.

While I very much doubt if the entire process is going to be carbon negative, "straight up lie" is very strongly worded. In essence, by building wooden structures you can store CO2 in urban environments that are currently dominated by concrete. To be sure, to be carbon negative the whole process needs proper thought; the trees for the wood of course needs to be replanted and the energy used in milling, construction and transportation need to be sourced durable, I get that.

But I mean, if we want anything to be carbon negative we need to capture carbon from the atmosphere and put it somewhere; e.g. reclaiming land for forests or putting carbon back into the ground where we got it from, but putting carbon in constructions as part of the solution, why not? For dealing with climate change, the important part is getting it out of the atmosphere.

The problem is that people believe this type of greenwashing (as can be seen by other comments on this thread). Building a house is never going to be carbon negative. Carbon neutral at best, but even that is going to be almost impossible to achieve.

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