I agree, Lauren. How is delay a benefit?
If we are serious about carbon reduction (and it appears much of the world is getting there), then I can only imagine that the end of life for wood is not going to be decay. We definitely need to have figured this out 60-100 years from now. Are there other ways of talking about or quantifying the benefits of delay?
Also agree with Lara – we need to use carbon emissions + energy instead of just energy when we reduce our footprint from operational energy use. We are starting to use NREL Cambium.
Jacob, my understanding is that if you look long term, when you emit carbon doesn’t matter much in most cases (please respond if you think otherwise). CO2 will last centuries, CH4 will be mostly depleted in 20, but the warming and other effects from both will last longer. If you have a deadline, like “stay under 1.5 by 2050” then you can use ton-years. The problem is that we really have a budget for the total tons of CO2e, not a timeframe. Or rather the timeframes for global CO2e emissions are generated by paths that meet the global carbon budget, not the other way around. Staying under 1.5 determines a total budget, and the budget determines the timeframe. The global carbon budget for 1.5 appears to be around 340-400 GT CO2e and we are emitting around 60 GigaTons of CO2e/year.
To bring this back to the question at the top of this email, delay is only a benefit under a few conditions as I see it: