Question

To ask the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, what assessment her Department has made of the effect of carbon emissions from England's upland and lowland peatlands.

The Governments annual publication of the UK’s greenhouse gas inventory (ref) reports that emissions from management and use of lowland and horticultural soils such as peat was 2.6 million tonnes of carbon dioxide [1]. This contributes less than 1% to the estimated 359 million tonnes of carbon dioxide emitted in England in 20131. We do not currently estimate emissions from upland peat due to a lack of suitable input data.

In 2014 DECC commissioned the Natural Environment Research Council’s Centre for Ecology and Hydrology to propose approaches for the incorporation of emissions from wetland rewetting and drainage from both lowland and upland peatlands in the greenhouse gas emissions inventory. They will report their recommendations by 2017, which will improve our understanding of emissions in this sector.

[1] Greenhouse Gas Inventories for England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland: 1990-2013, Salisbury, G. Thistlethwaite, K. Young, L. Cardenas, A. Thomson., Ricardo-AEA/R/3452, (2015). http://naei.defra.gov.uk/reports/reports?report_id=810