They Can Capture More Carbon Than They Emit. So Why Aren't Wooden Buildings Mainstream?

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for requerdanos:

They can capture more carbon than they emit. So why aren't wooden buildings mainstream?:

Four storeys high and made almost entirely of wood, the ZEB Lab building in Trondheim, Norway, had, even before it existed, sucked as much carbon from the atmosphere as it would probably produce in construction. Now, thanks to its arboreal origins, as well as to the sleek expanse of solar panels on its roof and to other energy efficiency measures, it is a carbon-negative building. In other words, from birth to demise, it will have drawn down more carbon than it emitted.

There are various ways to store excess carbon dioxide. "One way is to have it hidden in buildings," says Tero Hasu, a project manager at Kouvola Innovation, a municipally owned development company of the City of Kouvola in Finland. The ZEB (zero emission building) Lab achieves this by using wood for almost everything-from beams to pillars and staircases. Concrete is to be found only in the foundations and the ground floor.

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