Carbon Capture and Storage

(asked on 27th February 2020) - View Source

Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what steps his Department is taking to ensure that carbon sinks in the UK are not destroyed.


Answered by
Rebecca Pow Portrait
Rebecca Pow
Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
This question was answered on 3rd March 2020

To reach net zero we must protect and enhance the capacity of our natural environment to capture carbon. Our manifesto committed to invest in nature-based solutions to climate change through a Nature for Climate Fund, to increase tree planting, peatland restoration and nature recovery.

The UK’s trees and woodlands currently capture 4% of our annual greenhouse gas emissions. We must protect the trees we already have, and plant more so that they can capture more carbon. That is why we committed to increase tree planting across the UK to 30,000 hectares of trees per year by 2025. Forestry regulations also ensure that when trees are felled, for example for timber, they should be replanted and the land restocked.

Our peatlands are a natural carbon sink, but they have been drained and degraded, releasing emissions. We have therefore allocated £10 million to restore approximately 6,500 hectares of degraded peatland, reducing emissions, and will fund further restoration in this Parliament.

Coastal wetland habitats such as saltmarsh and seagrass provide carbon sinks. In the UK, these habitats are protected in some Marine Protected Areas and we are looking at whether their protection could be expanded further. There are also wider measures under the 25 Year Environment Plan to secure clean, healthy, productive and biologically diverse seas.

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