A framework for ground-up life cycle assessment of novel, carbon-storing building materials

Currently, materials production of materials is responsible for over 25% of anthropogenic CO2 emissions. However, due to their long-lived nature and enormous scale of production, some building materials offer a potential means for atmospheric carbon storage. Accurate emissions accounting is key to understanding this potential, yet life-cycle inventory (LCI) databases struggle to keep up with the wide array of novel materials and provide the data to accurately characterize their effect on net carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) emissions and uptake. To this end, we offer a framework for developing LCIs from the ground up using thermodynamic first principles and provide guidance on alternative approaches to characterize material LCIs from limited data when first principles approaches are not feasible. This framework provides a generalizable methodology to develop and compare LCIs of novel material production. To ensure the accuracy of this framework and provide step-by-step examples of its application, we consider the following mineral-based and bio-based building materials: Portland cement, low-carbon steel, gypsum board, and cross-laminated timber from yellow poplar and from eastern hemlock, showing good agreement with existing LCIs. This framework is developed with a particular focus on describing CO2e emissions and energy consumption of material production, but it could be extended to other environmental impacts or applications. Grounding initial LCIs in first principles can guide the early-stage design of novel materials and processes to minimize CO2e emissions or improve the carbon sequestration potential of critical materials across sectors.