CEO of innovative building material company BamCore, Hal Hinkle Ph.D, has proposed a potential solution for both the climate crisis and the building crisis in the form of timber bamboo.
BamCore has been in the business of providing cutting-edge construction materials based on timber bamboo that are not only cost-efficient, but also environmentally friendly and can help decarbonize the built environment.
According to Hinkle, bamboo is uniquely positioned for the job of mitigating global warming due to its unique set of properties. Namely, bamboo grows very fast, is highly profitable, has efficient land use and is also very strong. Furthermore, timber bamboo has the ability to remove CO2 emissions from the atmosphere, making it an incredibly attractive material on many levels.
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Hal Hinkle is about to release his new publication on the matter titled “Our Green Down Payment: Fighting Climate Change by Turning Buildings into Carbon Sinks with Timber Bamboo”.
In the wake of an ever-increasing urgency for climate solutions, Hinkle acknowledges that there are already a number of different technologies available that would limit the amount of emissions that are released into the air. However, he argues, the amount of solutions designed to capture CO2 that already exists in the atmosphere is far less.
And so BamCore has been focused on developing six different options with that idea in mind. The first three are also the most expensive and they are direct air capture (DAC) with sequestration, bioenergy with carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) and enhanced weathering.
The downside of these three is that they are less scalable and are much more expensive than natural options.
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So this is how they came up with the idea of forestation as a profitable means of removing carbon dioxide from the air. But not just any forestation will do, as most wood still cannot handle the task of carbon removal fast enough.
And that is where timber bamboo comes in.
With a growth rate of 36 inches per 24 hours, bamboo is one of the fastest-growing plants on the planet. And just as with other types of trees, timber bamboo can be used to make durable construction products that also capture and store CO2.
In comparison, timber bamboo can store about 400% more carbon dioxide than regular wood. And over time, that percentage only increases.
