Capturing transitional changes in GHG fluxes following peat restoration

Description

There is approximately 1,420,000 hectares of peat in England, with deep peat accounting for approximately 680,000 hectares. However, the majority of our deep peat is degraded, damaged and dried out, with only 13% of deep peat remaining in a near natural state. As a result, peatlands in England emit approximately 8 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent per year, about 2% of England's total greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. There is an urgent need to re-wet peatlands to abate these GHG emissions to meet our net zero targets. In Carbon Budget 7, the Climate Change Committee recommends that by 2040, peatland restoration should represent over 50% of the emissions savings in land use, and 17% of the savings in the agriculture and land use sector. Peatland restoration targets have been set in the 2023 Environmental Improvement Plan (EIP), with an aim to restore 280,000 hectares by 2050. When peat is restored or re-wet, it moves from a degraded condition category to a restored or re-wet condition category in the UK National GHG Inventory using an IPCC Tier 2 methodology. This move is treated as a step-change without considering any transition between the two steady states. However, it has been hypothesised that this methodology is failing to consider a significant transitional removal of CO2 when a heavily degraded peat is restored. Thus, the CO2 sequestration potential of peat restoration may have been significantly underestimated. To date, the abatement potential of peat restoration has focused only on avoided emissions, however, the potential transitional removal of CO2 could make peat restoration a significant net greenhouse gas removal (GGR), which would be a game changer for attracting carbon finance. The report by Evans et al (2022) on ‘Aligning the Peatland Code with the UK Peatland Inventory’, proposes a model for capturing transitional changes in GHG fluxes post-restoration for CO2. However, this model needs to be refined and validated before it can be used to support investment in peat restoration or to understand the transitional removal of CO2 and its contribution to emissions savings. Therefore, research is required to refine and validate the model approach and to establish the criteria and method for how transitional CO2 uptake could be applied within the National GHG inventory and the Peatland Code.