Mr. Charles Shier:

On the land issue, carbon sequestration is important but there is also carbon accounting looking ahead. Up until now we have had the EU emissions trading scheme, ETS, and the burden or effort sharing agreement, with which Ireland struggles. As Mr. Donnellan mentioned in his opening statement, from 2020 onwards, there will be a third pillar called land use, land-use change and forestry, LULUCF, that will have to be reported on in five-year blocks. Bord na Móna's peatlands fall into that category - not so much the product end, because that gets counted in the energy categories, but what happens on the land itself. That is why over the past decade we have tried to quantify the emissions generated by different types of recolonised areas and different types of land use. The cessation of harvesting does not stop emissions as residual peat still generates emissions and one way to reduce those is to rewet peatland. Another way is to plant high-growth or high-yield crops on such land. If afforestation is successful and is followed by quite a high growth yield, then the carbon sequestration from the trees is higher than what one loses from the land below.

One of the difficulties with increasing our own biomass relates to the accounting rules for biomass. If willow, for example, is grown on peatlands, even though it will not grow very well, we would have to count the emissions from the soil as well. If a residue from a factory or sawmill gate is used, then one cannot. If one grows a crop, and one uses all of that crop for burning, then one must also count the emissions according to the rules. That is why growing biomass on peatlands for use either in the power or heat sector is a tricky operation.