Dr. Karl Richards:

There are a couple EIP schemes, which are trying to increase the speed of rewetting. There is farm-carbon and the FarmPEAT project. Work is under way in the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine to do that. I think one of the measures in the new Common Agricultural Policy is around rewetting. This goes back to what the director said earlier regarding the uncertainties. We think the emissions are 10 tonnes or 20 tonnes of CO2 per hectare. We do not know that those are the actual emissions. We think we know where the peat soils are but we do not have a national map of where those peats are, definitively for agriculture. There is an awful lot of uncertainty that we are trying to overcome with our research and on which we need to get a better handle. We need know if we are paying a farmer for 1 tonne, 10 tonnes or 20 tonnes. There is a big difference in the payment mechanism for that and which farms those actually are. The Deputy is right that these are hot spots in our landscape. We know they are hot spots but we need to better understand where they are and what the actual emissions are. Then the schemes will come in order to incentivise farmers to make decisions about what they want to do with their land. They can decide whether it is more economically viable to farm carbon and biodiversity or to farm it the way that they are currently farming it. Overcoming these uncertainties will really help.

In terms of the monitoring, reporting and verification around that, the director is right that Terrain-AI is helping in that but we are also developing peat models. The EPA has funded three fellowship projects, working on peat soils to refine the emission factors associated with those. Those are all coming to fruition in the next two or three years.

We are starting to develop that national expertise in what the emissions from our soils are, where those soils are, and the economics will then come in terms of rewetting them. As the director said, we are involved in a number of projects. We are not alone in this across Europe. Other European countries are doing this as well.