[This page features a lecture by sustainable builder and author Chris Magwood on September 29, 2019, delivered at the Natural Building EAST conference held at the Deanery Project in Ship Harbour, Nova Scotia. Magwood spoke for about an hour, and videos of the entire presentation are available at the links below. Magwood’s master’s thesis, “Opportunities for carbon dioxide removal and storage in building materials” is available as a PDF on his website. This document contains many of the graphs he refers to during his lecture.]
For anyone concerned about the climate crisis, sustainable builder and author Chris Magwood delivered a stunning and hope-filled lecture on September 29, 2019, at the Natural Building EAST conference held at the Deanery Project in Ship Harbour, Nova Scotia. The building sector is responsible for an estimated 40% of global carbon emissions.
Based on years of research that he recently completed, Magwood has identified a simple, step-by-step pathway for using current building techniques and existing materials to use new buildings to remove carbon from the atmosphere.
Overview: "A Straw to Save the World"--an article summarizing the highlights of Magwood's lecture.
The lecture itself is broken into 6 video segments:
Segment 1--Introduction, discovering the importance of "embodied carbon" in building materials. Some organically based building materials are carbon sinks, sucking carbon out of the atmosphere.
Segment 2--More on buildings as potential carbon sinks; the paradox of increased embodied carbon in highly-energy-efficient buildings; impact compared to shutting down 25 large coal plants.
Segment 3
Segment 4
Segment 5
Segment 6