With ESG remaining a big topic in real estate, with an emphasis on reporting about its carbon footprint, some researchers in the publication Nature Communications noted how going big on engineered wood could help reduce global numbers.

"We show that if 90% of the new urban population would be housed in newly built urban mid-rise buildings with wooden constructions, 106 Gt of additional CO2 could be saved by 2100. Forest plantations would need to expand by up to 149 Mha by 2100 and harvests from unprotected natural forests would increase," the study said.

A look at the numbers, though, point out how difficult that would be. With a current 50% of the global population living in cities, they worked with two potential projections: one in which 58% would live in cities by 2100 and other in which 92% would. "By the middle of this century, the newly built infrastructure (including new urban housing) may exceed the infrastructure being built since the beginning of industrialization," the researchers said.