Answer to submitter. The peat industry is misleading about carbon dioxide emissions

It is the climate crisis that threatens food production, not a peat breaking ban. We understand that the peat industry wants to invisible the emissions they cause themselves. Bioenergy company Neova refers in an answer on Our submitter to the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency’s climate reporting, which posts annual emissions of 0.3 million tonnes of carbon dioxide from cultivation bumps. But that is to reduce the total emissions of the peat mining.

The Swedish Environmental Protection Agency book emissions with slow degradation and has since 1990 in total posted approximately 2 million tonnes of carbon dioxide As a cultivation, but at the same time shoots an emission debt of approximately 6 million tonnes of carbon dioxide to report in the coming years. We therefore write in our submitter that what peat mining causes corresponds to a much greater emissions than what climate reporting shows because all peat inexorably becomes carbon dioxide when used.

Now in the middle of the climate crisis, all emissions must be reduced to a minimum. Therefore, we propose a ban on all peat mining and peat sale.

Neova uses In its answer the argument that Sweden’s food production requires peat. We would like to point out here that peat use contributes to climate change that threatens food production with drought, flooding and new plant diseases, which pose a greater threat to food supply than a ban on peat. Most of the food we eat is produced in fields and pastures that do not need any peat.

It is positive that Neova recognizes that peat can be replaced by leaf compost. The fact that there are no volumes today to replace today’s turf use, Neova should see as a signal to change the work to meet a new market, rather than dig deeper into the peatlands.

Other materials, of course, cause carbon dioxide emissions, as Neova says in its response, but the company’s representatives do not mention that emissions from leaf compost are included in the ecosystem’s natural carbon cycle, because the turf, which is fossil adds carbon dioxide to the atmosphere.

We also want to respond to Neova’s argument that only a small area of ​​Sweden’s ditched wetlands consists of peat cover. It is true that the area is small, but the argument does not hold; Peat cover gives the largest emissions per unit area. Continuing with this outdated business at the same time as large resources, with tax -financed funds, is invested in returning drained peatland is directly counterproductive.

Neova also states in its answer that « the growth of peat in Sweden is far greater than the amount harvested », where they refer to a website from Sweden’s geological surveys that do not contain that information at all. On the contrary Shows research That marshes in Sweden stopped accumulating peat during dry years, which are becoming more common in the future.

Neova’s attempt to count on wet marshes’ carbon -tumulating ability for his own financial gain is not to take responsibility, but rather a way to mislead.

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