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Joint Oireachtas Committee on Climate Action: Peatlands Restoration and Rehabilitation: Discussion (23 Oct 2019)

Dr. Florence Renou-Wilson: The simple answer is "quite a lot". I do not know exactly how much, but a lot of that emissions total comes from the burning of peat and horticulture peat. We could easily move that use to zero. I am not talking just about domestic turf. We do not know how much domestic turf cutting there is in Ireland and what are the associated emissions. We have a vague...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Climate Action: Peatlands Restoration and Rehabilitation: Discussion (23 Oct 2019)

Dr. Florence Renou-Wilson: That is what we are discussing at international level. The FAO, UNFCCC and the IPCC all agree that we should say away from peat soils. Peat soils should be wet and that is it.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Climate Action: Peatlands Restoration and Rehabilitation: Discussion (23 Oct 2019)

Brian Stanley: What we would refer to as cutaway is where the peat has been taken away completely at the edges, while the cutover I am referring to in Bord na Móna is where up to 3 m of peat is still left in the bog. Bord na Móna has taken 1 m or 1.5 m. from it.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Climate Action: Peatlands Restoration and Rehabilitation: Discussion (23 Oct 2019)

Eamon Ryan: Dr Renou-Wilson stated earlier it is not sufficient to stop peat extraction or to ban unsustainable use of peatlands. I assume from that statement that her best scientific advice and her experience on the international panel is that we should immediately cease all extraction of peat. That would be one way to immediately save 5 million tonnes per annum.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Climate Action: Peatlands Restoration and Rehabilitation: Discussion (23 Oct 2019)

Brian Stanley: I welcome Dr. Renou-Wilson and Mr. Lucas. Dr. Renou-Wilson stated abandoning or rewetting drained peat soils under the heading of rehabilitation is not a climate-friendly action because both approaches release large volumes of greenhouse gases. My understanding was that once drained peat has been rewetted, it will stop releasing carbon, but Dr. Renou-Wilson seemed to contradict that.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Climate Action: Peatlands Restoration and Rehabilitation: Discussion (23 Oct 2019)

Dr. Florence Renou-Wilson: I thank the Chairman, Deputies and Senators, ladies and gentlemen. Peatlands are unique ecosystems in the context of the global carbon cycle. This is because in addition to being home to rare biodiversity, peatlands are the largest and most concentrated global store of carbon of all terrestrial ecosystems, containing twice the carbon of the forest biomass. The...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Climate Action: Peatlands Restoration and Rehabilitation: Discussion (23 Oct 2019)

Dr. Florence Renou-Wilson: The definitions are in this document. It is simple and does not matter if the surface of the peat is vegetated or not. For flooding, the water goes at least 20 cm above the surface of the peatlands for long periods. Rewetting is managed so that the water stays just below the surface of the peatlands 80% of the time. There are flooding events during the winter...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Climate Action: Peatlands Restoration and Rehabilitation: Discussion (23 Oct 2019)

...not for the 1,800 ha. That equates to the high bog - the uncut bog - which covers 16,000 ha. The next question concerned how long it takes to re-wet. It is magical. If one wets a basket of peat, it stops emitting immediately. There is no trick involved and nothing else is necessary. It could not be cheaper. It simply involves preventing rainwater from draining away and leaving it...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Climate Action: Peatlands Restoration and Rehabilitation: Discussion (23 Oct 2019)

...carbon so obviously it can catch fire very quickly and the fire will spread, leading to a significant amount of carbon being released. We have seen it on television. The smog in Indonesia is old peat burning. Once a fire starts it burns for a long time. Bord na Móna knows that very well, as it has to stabilise the peat stacks so they do not catch fire. We are dealing with a fuel....

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Climate Action: Peatlands Restoration and Rehabilitation: Discussion (23 Oct 2019)

Dr. Florence Renou-Wilson: I wish to clarify a point. Peatlands have two functions when it comes to carbon. It stores the carbon that is already in there, which is the biggest issue at the moment. This is the carbon that has taken thousands of years to accumulate in the peat. Peat is roughly 50 kg of carbon per cu. m. To rewet it is just to keep that carbon in and to stop the emissions,...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Climate Action: Peatlands Restoration and Rehabilitation: Discussion (23 Oct 2019)

...of experience in that. Unfortunately, this was all funded by Bord na Móna, which has all the reports. I have been working with Bord na Móna for the past 20 years on how to grow anything on peat. We have tried everything. The Deputy mentioned silver birch. Silver birch grows naturally on cutover bog because it is dry. As the Deputy said, as soon as peat is wetted, the birch...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Climate Action: Peatlands Restoration and Rehabilitation: Discussion (23 Oct 2019)

Dr. Florence Renou-Wilson: The Deputy is talking about areas where the peat has been removed-----

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Climate Action: Peatlands Restoration and Rehabilitation: Discussion (23 Oct 2019)

Dr. Florence Renou-Wilson: The thing one has to remember is that one has peat for a reason, which is because it has sequestered carbon. If one wants the proof, it is in the pudding. One has a bog because carbon has been sequestered.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Climate Action: Peatlands Restoration and Rehabilitation: Discussion (23 Oct 2019)

Michael Fitzmaurice: Is Dr. Renou-Wilson telling me that peat delivers less sequestration?

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Climate Action: Peatlands Restoration and Rehabilitation: Discussion (23 Oct 2019)

Michael Fitzmaurice: I am not talking about peat, which is in the air, but is it not the case that following domestic turf cutting, where it has been tested by scientists the regeneration of bog has been phenomenal?

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Climate Action: Peatlands Restoration and Rehabilitation: Discussion (23 Oct 2019)

Jack Chambers: I refer to the Government's climate action plan. Dr. Renou-Wilson mentioned that rewetting is low-hanging fruit and a mitigation measure that must be applied to all publicly-owned peatlands wherever feasible but it is not sufficient to stop peat extraction or ban unsustainable use of peatlands. Does she think the Government's plan goes far enough in this area?

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Climate Action: Peatlands Restoration and Rehabilitation: Discussion (23 Oct 2019)

...it concentrates on those SACs that are the jewel of the bogs. I must say something about CAP. Speaking as a soil scientist, out of all the bad guys out there - and cutover bogs were mentioned - peat used for agriculture is the worst emitter. It is the top out of all land-use forms over the whole planet. If one takes the list of all possible land uses, this is up there. This is as...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Climate Action: Peatlands Restoration and Rehabilitation: Discussion (23 Oct 2019)

Mr. Brian Lucas: As I said, the national peatlands strategy states: "Ireland will devise and implement a system of management that will ensure that [domestic] turf-cutting on blanket bogs SACs continues in such a way that will not threaten the [ecological] integrity of the sites." The strategy also indicates that peat extraction on blanket bog NHAs is to be addressed in tandem with the...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Climate Action: Peatlands Restoration and Rehabilitation: Discussion (23 Oct 2019)

...is a re-wetting or restoration plan, the Department consults all the landowners and everybody is consulted before any of those plans proceed. What I have proposed is to support farmers who have peat soils that need to be re-wetted. They must be paid instead to farm carbon. I know in the past they had to drain these lands. Now we realise, that was a bad idea for the climate. They will...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Climate Action: Peatlands Restoration and Rehabilitation: Discussion (23 Oct 2019)

Dr. Florence Renou-Wilson: That is happening in Germany, Canada, Finland and other areas of degraded peat soils. That needs to be farmed. We should invest to ensure landowners with a considerable store of carbon keep it in the ground. We do not want bogs to dry up and emit all the time. Basically, a normal farmer would be paid to have a crop or harvest. In this case, people would be paid...