The term “carbon sequestration” gets bandied about a lot in the construction industry when talking about net zero buildings, but what exactly does it mean and how does it get used and misused?

Simon Wyatt at Cundall has been our net zero jargon buster for this podcast series and here he explains sequestration, which refers to the carbon dioxide absorbed as a tree grows and how it is then stored in the form of timber.

Wyatt argues that while using timber in buildings is often a good solution, construction professionals need to guard against using sequestration as a licence to knock down and build from scratch rather than retrofitting existing buildings.

Listen to Wyatt on the importance of resource efficiency, why he thinks sequestration should not be included in upfront embodied carbon calculations and how fears over fire safety are a challenge for designers looking at timber solutions. 

For our subscribers only, we have an extended version of the interview which you can access now via the player above and below.

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