Edinburgh Napier University

  The embodied carbon of building materials is a significant contributor to greenhouse gas emissions. Hemp is widely recognized as the most used vegetal insulation materials due to its comparable mechanical properties and much better environmental performance than that of traditional insulation materials. This article reviews the advances of hemp fibre’s application in building and construction from the perspectives of the type of hemp-based building materials, the evolution of hemp building and construction, the method of building with hemp, and the development of related policies and regulations. The result shows that multiple hemp-based building materials and innovative methods of hemp construction are developed with the technology advances. Hemp construction has been popularized to residential, commercial and institutional buildings around the world. However, there are still knowledge gaps to develop an incorporated hemp standards or building code applied in EU or globally.