Mr. Paul Price:

I will follow up on what Professor Sweeney was talking about. On the land use side of things, we have to realise that land carbon storage is not simply exchangeable, 1 tonne for 1 tonne, with fossil carbon storage. They are very different things. Fossil carbon is geologically stored for millions of years until we take it out. Land carbon storage, if we increase it across the world or in Ireland, is very vulnerable carbon storage. If we get a lot of climate change, all that carbon might go back into the atmosphere as it burns or as soil carbon is lost, etc. It is important to understand that those two types of storage are not fungible. The accounting might say they are but that is not the case. It is important we understand that in the physics because it affects how we think about these things.

When we are talking about our immediate action, one thing that is important to understand about carbon in land is that it is taken in very slowly but can be released very quickly. There can be a forest fire or a field can be ploughed and so forth, and the carbon can be released quickly. That type of storage is, therefore, hugely vulnerable and uncertain. Once it has been stored, it must be kept there, on a landscape scale. The level of carbon stored must be increased. A strong land use policy is required to ensure that happens. Accounting for it is not easy at all. If we are going to put public money towards it, we must be certain of what we are getting. That is important.

On the slow in-fast out element of carbon storage, we have a big focus on afforestation at the moment but it has not happened. Therefore, we must think about what we are going to do to make sure fast losses do not occur right now. To think the unthinkable, it would mean restricting forest harvest, which is planned to increase because the level of past planting was quite high. We could restrict that to avoid fast loss. We can also considerably lower peat extraction. There may be a horticultural sector but the volume of carbon being extracted and lost is far bigger than that in terms of exports. We have serious choices to make. They could be made right now and could reduce those fast losses. Perhaps slow afforestation, re-wetting and soil carbon sequestration then come into the equation, but they are slower. We must make sure those measures are taken.