A wooden skyscraper built in the city of Skelleftea in Sweden has been found to capture and store vast quantities of CO2 from the atmosphere.
The new structure was unveiled in September 2021 and stands 20 storeys (75 meters) tall, but it isn’t the only building made of wood in this part of the world.
Skelleftea has set out to try and solve the climate crisis, one environmentally friendly structure at a time.
And the idea of this latest one wasn’t as well received initially due to its sheer size, with opponents questioning its durability and efficiency.
But as it turned out in the process of building the wooden skyscraper, architect Robert Schmitz and his team found that building it exclusively out of timber would be more effective than replacing it with other materials for different elements.
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The wooden skyscraper was designed as a cultural center, and today it houses two art galleries, a conference hall, a library, 6 theater stages and even a hotel with 205 rooms.
Construction called for 12,000 cubic meters (~423,776 cubic feet) of timber harvested from local forests and is an attempt to move away from carbon-intensive building materials, such as cement – the world’s largest industrial CO2 emitter.
In addition to not emitting any carbon dioxide into the air, the wooden structure is projected to capture as much as 9,000 metric tons of CO2 throughout its lifetime.
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The skyscraper’s sustainability is further reinforced by the fact that it’s powered by solar panels, whereas excess power can be stored away in its basement for later use.
Moreover, the building boasts the unique ability to ‘communicate’ with other structures around it, and if necessary, it can send the spare energy to them.
The decisions for energy distribution are made by the building itself thanks to AI technology that analyzes data every minute of every day.
