Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Wednesday, 17 November 2021
Joint Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine
Carbon Sequestration and Storage in Agriculture: Discussion
Dr. Karl Richards:
We have, although again I may be speaking for Dr. Lanigan. We have done some modelling and compared mineral soils, organomineral soils and peat soils. As Dr. Lanigan outlined, the peat soils were emitting approximately between 8 Mt and 9 Mt of carbon in total. Those organomineral soils were emitting between 1.8 Mt and 2 Mt of carbon, or a quarter of the amount. The reason for the high figure is probably that there is much more of that soil in comparison with the 350,000 ha or 330,000 ha of peat soils.