Introduction

This year I celebrate the 10^th anniversary of my attempts to stimulate within the International Peat Society a factual discussion on the “renewability” of peat and its relation to climate change. The first article was “Peat and the art of energy tax evasion” (IMCG Newsletter 3: 13 – 17, 1997). Further papers followed: “Renewability revisited” (IMCG Newsletter 2004/1: 16 – 20), “And what about peat?” (IMCG Newsletter 2005/1: 12 – 18), “Peat not allowed in EU Ecolabel” (IMCG Newsletter 2005-4: 16-18). While these articles led to some personal acrimony from IPS, there was no discussion on substance, no exchange of arguments.

But this has now changed!

On 3 January 2007 IMCG send a motivated request to the European Commission to refrain from using the misleading label of “peat as a long-term renewable energy resource”[1]. On 22 February 2007 IPS reacted to the Commission “in order to enlighten about the nature of peatlands and peat with existing data, especially views on their impact on climate.”[2] As a preamble to that letter IPS accused the International Mire Conservation Group of using “inappropriate arguments and general opinions provided by institutions and bodies out of context and without references to key sources.”

An interesting opinion. And at least an invitation to look closer at IPS’s own arguments.

Delayed insight…

The rate of renewal of peat is too slow to be relevant for society. This is an ancient truth that until a decade ago was also supported by IPS. Since the entry of Finland and Sweden to the EU, IPS has been preaching the renewability of peat as a “new insight” in order to try and manipulate the political agenda

IPS states: “The question of whether or not peat is a fossil or a renewable fuel was studied comprehensively, probably for the first time, in 2000 when scientists proposed that peat should be referred to as a ‘slowly renewable fuel’ (Crill, P., Hargreaves, K., Korhola, A., 2000).”

Comments: The first scientific study that comprehensively discussed the renewability of fuel peat was published 350 years ago in the very first book on peatlands “Tractatus de turffis ceu cespitibus bituminosis” (Treatise on peat or pitch holding sods) of the Groningen University professor Martinus Schoockius (1658). The book devotes a full chapter to the question “An materia cespititia effossa, progressi temporis restaurari possit?” (Whether excavated sod material can over time be restored?, fig. 1). Since then, all serious publications on peat and peatlands from the 17^th to the 19^th century have addressed this question. In those days knowledge on the rate of peat renewal was urgent for long-term planning of energy availability in those parts of Europe where peat constituted the major but diminishing source of energy supply. Ever since it had become established knowledge that peat and peatlands are “growing”, there has never been doubt that peat is renewable, albeit slowly.

Fig. 1: The first comprehensive study about peat as a renewable fuel: chapter XIV of Schoockius (1658). Collection Hans Joosten.

The economic interest in the renewability of peat as an energy resource vanished in the second half of the 19^th century with the emergence of coal and later oil as major energy carriers. Peat renewability again became a topic in the 1960s when restoration of peatlands became relevant from a nature conservation point of view.

IPS is now interested in peat renewability because recently the “renewability question” has changed once again from an academic and conservational issue to an economic topic. Since Finland and Sweden joined the European Union (EU) in 1995, these major peat-burning countries, the peat fuel industry (which largely finances IPS), and IPS have been lobbying the European Commission to gain fiscal advantages for peat. Without such preferential treatment, power plants using peat fuels have difficulties competing with coal and other fossil fuels (Vapo Oy 2006) that have a lower combustion emission factor than peat (see the contribution on CO₂ emission factors elsewhere in this Newsletter). Since the Kyoto Protocol of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change was negotiated (1997) and came in force (16 February 2005), lobbying efforts had to be intensified (see the contribution on UNFCCC and the Kyoto Protocol elsewhere in this Newsletter).

The strategy is to try and disconnect peat from other fossil fuels (such as coal and lignite) and to associate it more closely with living material (biomass fuels).

Before the enlargement of the EU, leading IPS officials – with the rest of the world – held the position that the slow rate of peat renewal makes the renewability of peat irrelevant for society. Some examples:

-     In 1994, the Russian IPS-executive board member Savelyev concluded in the IPS-Bulletin: “the reproduction ability of peat reserves has significance predominantly from the geological point of view rather than from the nearest industrial perspective.”

-     In Telma (the scientific journal of the German IPS branch) of December 1996 the IPS vice-president and leading Belarussian peat scientist Lishtvan wrote that “although peat is regenerating, it can not be considered a renewable resource” (translation HJ). He must have been instructed by his IPS colleagues on the new policy soon after as five months later – at the 1997 Peat Conference in Minsk – Lishtvan publicly defended the “peat is renewable biomass” story that IPS meanwhile had adopted.

Still some industrial realists in the ‘IPS peat family’ acknowledge the factual non-renewability of peat. Bord na Mona in Ireland, for example, clearly differentiates between peat and renewables/biomass and recognizes in its long-term policies that peat is a finite resource (e.g. in its Submission on the Energy Green Paper: “Towards a Sustainable Energy Future for Ireland” 30 November 2006). Also the Irish governmental national energy agency defines peat as a “fossil sedimentary deposit”[3].

Selective reading…

The library of IPS is of restricted size and largely consists of home-made ‘grey-literature’. The overwhelming peer-reviewed scientific literature that contradicts IPS’s statements is systematically ignored. Texts of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) are presented out of context to pretend the opposite of what IPCC is saying.

IPS states: “Since then, several new studies (see references) have been carried out, none of which defined peat as a fossil.”

Comments: All the mentioned studies were carried out or commissioned by the peat industry and closely associated institutes. They are not ‘key sources’ but ‘grey literature’, which has not been subject to peer review and therefore in science is not recognized as being of high scientific standard. In contrast, in the relevant peer-reviewed scientific journals, peat and the remains that Holocene deposits contain are widely described as “fossil” or “subfossil”. Some random recent examples:

Journal of Ecology 94 (2006): 415-430; Earth and Planetary Science Letters 202 (2002): 419-434; Can. J. Bot. 77 (1999): 556–563; Journal of Biogeography 34 (2007): 473-488; Oecologia 130 (2002): 309-314; Grana 44 (2005): 45 – 50; J. Quaternary Sci. 22 (2006): 209-221; Radiocarbon 46 (2004): 455-463; Journal of Paleolimnology (2007) DOI 10.1007/s10933-006-9068-8; The Holocene 17 (2007): 283-288; Vegetation History and Archaeobotany 16 (2007): 183-195; Ecosystems 9 (2006): 1278-1288; Ecography 30 (2007): 120-134; Journal of Animal Ecology 76 (2007): 276-288; Science 284 (1999): 1971-1973; Soil Sci. Soc. Am. J. 71 (2007): 492-499; Phil. Trans. Linn. Soc. B 362 (2007): 309-319; Arctic, Antarctic and Alpine Research 33 (2001): 19-27, Journal of Coastal Research 22 (2006):1423–1436; Global Ecology and Biogeography (2007) doi:10.1111/j.1466-8238.2007.00317.x; Quaternary Science Reviews 25 (2006): 1966–1994; Australian Journal of Ecology 18 (2007): 145–149; Global and Planetary Change 46 (2005): 361-379; Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology 198 (2003): 403-422; Proc. Nat. Acad. Sc. 102 (2005): 10904-10908; etc., etc.

Interestingly, even Atte Korhola, the only co-author of the Crill et al. 2000 report with substantial palaeoecological expertise, does not shrink from calling Holocene assemblages “subfossil” and “fossil” in his own peer-reviewed scientific papers. Take, for example, a look at:

Journal of Paleolimnology 24 (2000): 93-107; Hydrobiologia (Kluwer) 436 (2000): 165-169; Ecological Applications 11 (2001): 618-630; Journal of Quaternary Science 17 (2002): 287 – 301; Quaternary Science Reviews 21 (2002): 1841-1860; Water, Air and Soil Pollution 149 (2003): 339-361; Arctic, Antarctic and Alpine Research 37 (2005): 626-635.

This may sufficiently illustrate that the IPS “peat is not fossil” statement is not scientific argument but industry political spin.

IPS states: “The latest, by the International (sic!) Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) changed the classification of peat from fossil fuel to a separate category between fossil and renewable fuels (26.-28.4.2006, 25th session of IPCC, Port Louis, Mauritius 2006). Peat has now its own category ‘peat’.”

Comments: IPS has not presented this information in its full context. In the 2006 IPCC Guidelines for National Greenhouse Gas Inventories, it is clearly stated: “Although peat is not strictly speaking a fossil fuel, its greenhouse gas emission characteristics have been shown in life cycle studies to be comparable to that of fossil fuels (Nilsson and Nilsson, 2004; Uppenberg et al., 2001; Savolainen et al., 1994). Therefore, the CO₂ emissions from combustion of peat are included in the national emissions as for fossil fuels.” And: “Note that peat is treated as a fossil fuel and not a biofuel and emissions from its combustion are therefore included in the national total.”[4]

Furthermore in the glossary of those guidelines we can read: “Peat is not considered a biofuel in these guidelines due to the length of time required for peat to re-accumulate after harvest.” and “Note that peat is treated as a fossil carbon in these guidelines as it takes so long to replace harvested peat.”[5]

The Guidelines give energy peat a CO₂ emission factor of 106 g CO₂/MJ, i.e. clearly higher than the factors of coal (anthracite 98.3 g CO₂/MJ) and oil (74.1 g CO₂/MJ).[6] Recent studies from Sweden support this figure for peat (Nilsson 2004). In their most recent National Inventory Reports all European peat burning countries use a similarly high factor, Ireland for its peat power plants even a factor of 140 g CO₂/MJ.

Naturalistic fallacies…

IPS presents a lot of (often wrong) facts to illustrate that peat differs from coal and lignite and overlooks the fact that most of these differences have no bearing on the issue at stake: the effect of peat combustion on the climate.

IPS states: “It is misleading to equate currently developing and recently developed peat with lignite and coal.”

Comments: IMCG does not equate peat with lignite and coal; we recommend that with respect to its climatic effect peat should be treated like lignite and coal. We recommend this, because

-     the combustion of all these fuels implies mobilisation of carbon from a long-term carbon store;

-     the combustion of all these fuels leads to net emissions of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, and

-     all these fuels have a rate of renewal that is irrelevant for societal timeframes.

IPS states: “Coal was formed by plant remains that were compacted, hardened, chemically altered and metamorphosed by heat and pressure over a long geological time. … The plant groups, which were the parent material of coal, included club-mosses, horsetails and tree fern, all of which are now extinct (Prager, Barthelmes and Joosten 2006).”

Comments: Prager et al (2006) do not state that the mentioned plant groups are extinct, because we know better: they are alive and – in the case of horsetails – still contribute to recent peat formation. Now that this misconception has been corrected, would IPS change its opinion and treat coal as a renewable resource? I think not… and this exactly illustrates how this and similar statements of IPS (whether they are factually correct or not) have no relevance for the climate debate. The way IPS mistakes facts for value judgements is a classic example of a naturalistic fallacy.

The paper referred to is again no ‘key source’. Peatlands International, the glossy magazine of the International Peat Society, is not peer-reviewed and – although good and interesting papers may be found there – the magazine prints almost everything that is sent in, including articles of sometimes questionable scientific quality. My ample experience as an author for this journal has showed that there is no editorial feedback in content and that the journal does not shrink from unilaterally changing the content of a paper, when it does not serve IPS policy.

IPS continues by giving a definition for lignite: “Lignite is brown or soft coal, which has a higher moisture content and lower calorific value than black coal. It was formed mainly during the Tertiary period, 2 - 66 million years ago. Many of the genera of trees currently growing in tropical peat swamps have been found in lignite.”

Comments: Again the focus is on age and botanical composition and again these facts have no relevance for the issue at stake: the (non-) renewability of peat and the effect on climate of using peat for fuel.

IPS states: “Peat is the partly decomposed remains of the biomass that was produced, mostly by plants, on waterlogged substrates.”

Comments: The same applies for lignite and coal, so this isn’t even an argument to associate peat more strongly with biomass than with lignite or coal.

Talking of decomposition, if we focus on carbon (the most relevant element for climate change) and compare the fraction of the original biomass carbon that remains in the subsequent coalification products, peat is clearly much more closely related to lignite and coal than to biomass (fig. 2).

Fig. 2: The amount of carbon remaining during the successive stages of coalification, expressed as a proportion of the carbon in the original biomass. Thick line: best estimate, thin lines: high and low limits. After: Dukes 2003.

IPS states: “Peat is mostly water saturated and therefore not compacted.

Comments: Is this statement intended to mean that when a fuel has low water content and is compacted, it is fossil, not renewable, and bad for the climate? That would then also apply to wood briquettes and grass pellets (cf. Jones 2006).

IPS states: “Peat harvested today in Northern hemisphere was formed during the Holocene which is the present time after the retreat of the glaciers once covering most part of Europe.”

Comments: The Holocene is the period in which most of the present-day peat was formed. The “present time”, however, is also the last part of the Quaternary, in which most of the peat and part of the present-day lignite were formed. It is furthermore the last part of the Cenozoic, in which most of the present-day lignite and all peat were formed, and it is the last part of the Phanerozoic, in which all present-day coal, lignite and peat were formed. Moreover the “present time” is the last part of the Modern Times (18^th century until today), the Christian Era (0 AD to today), and the Subatlantic (800 BC to today), in which only (a minor) part of the present-day peat was formed.

The IPS choice for the Holocene as a reference period is clearly prompted by the wish to show that peat is young. The overwhelming majority of our present day peat was, however, not formed during the last several hundred years of the Holocene, but during the thousands of years that came before. This illustrates how peat is part of the long term terrestrial carbon store, whose mobilisation has a negative effect on the climate.

IPS states: “Those parent plant species, which formed the basal peat, are still forming new peat.”

Comments: This is no criterion for climate neutrality, certainly not after you just have stated that lignite is build up from tree genera currently growing in tropical peat swamps. Or must we conclude that IPS also pleads for a ‘renewability’ and ‘climate neutrality’ status for lignite?

IPS states: “Peat is not a fossil and does not contain any.”

Comments: See the reference lists above that shows that the scientific world uses the word “fossil” in another sense. De conclusie beter absetzen!

In conclusion, we can choose from a wide variety of features, some of which make peat look more like biomass, while others make peat look more similar to coal. However, these comparisons do not address the climate effect of different types of fuel. The only criterion relevant for comparing the climate effects of different types of fuel is the effect their use has on climate. When we apply this criterion, peat is much more related to coal than to biomass (see below).

Untimely error…

With pseudo-scientific figure-juggling IPS tries to play down the negative climate effect of peat fuel. Most IPS allegations are demonstrably wrong.

IPS states: The surface part of peat below the living ground layer, being less than 300 years old, amounts to 10.2% of the total peat carbon volume on average (Mäkilä 2006). Only the deeper and basal parts of the peat are thousands of years old. The harvested material consists thus of the living biomass above and below ground, the less than 300 years old surface layer (which is comparable to wood biomass, Mäkilä 2006) and older middle and basal peat.

Comments: IPS is completely wrong in claiming that 300-year-old wood biomass and peat are ‘comparable’. They are indeed of a similar age, but from a climate point of view these two types of fuel are completely different. The difference lies in the different future they would have.

Wood that is 300 years old – even if it were to remain in the forest – can be expected to largely change into CO₂ within the next decennia or centuries, when the tree dies and the dead wood decays. Using that wood for fuel means that its oxidation is somewhat accelerated and re-directed via an alternative pathway. The end products (CO₂ and H₂O) are the same and the same amount of CO₂ ends up in the atmosphere. The difference is that now humans instead of microbes consume the energy provided by oxidation.

In contrast, peat that is 300 years old can be expected to largely remain peat for thousands of years to come. Peat is the very part of the former biomass that under normal conditions would not end up in the atmosphere as CO₂. Burning 300-year-old peat mobilizes the carbon that otherwise would have remained in the long term store that it had just entered. Burning peat – whether it is 10 or 300 or 8000 years old – thus leads to a net emission of CO₂ to the atmosphere.

Because different greenhouse gases have a different lifetime in the atmosphere and a different heat-absorbing ability, their ‘global warming potential’ depends on the time horizon chosen (Joosten & Clarke 2002). An appropriate time frame to judge effects – for reasons of direct human contact, political decision making, and optimisation between time horizon and discount rate (Fearnside 2002) – is 100 years. This period has also been chosen by the Kyoto Protocol.

The focus of the IPS on 300 years therefore clamours for further analysis. The answer is found in Mäkilä (2006): “The time scales relevant for the stabilisation of the CO₂ concentration in the atmosphere are, according to the IPCC Third Assessment report (IPCC 2001), in the order of 100-300 years.”

You may check the full IPCC Third Assessment Report[7] and you will not encounter any such statement. But doing so, you will discover the error that Mäkilä has made. Mäkilä gravely misinterprets the IPCC findings that CO₂ concentrations in the atmosphere will continue to rise for another 100-300 years after the CO₂ emissions have decreased (fig. 3). The conclusion of Mäkilä “Because the renewal time of peat layers under 300 years old is less than the time horizon considered for the stabilisation of the atmospheric concentration, these biomass sources can be regarded as renewable for climate consideration” therefore is not only linguistically poor, but more importantly, it is completely wrong.

In contrast the Third Assessment Report states:

-     “All of the stabilisation profiles studied require CO₂ emissions to eventually drop well below current levels. … Stabilisation at 450 … ppm (i.e. the level that would keep global mean temperature changes below 2 ^oC in the next 300 years, HJ) would require global anthropogenic emissions to drop below 1990 levels within a few decades … and continue to steadily decrease thereafter.”[8]

-     “stabilization at 450 ppm will require emission reductions in Annex I countries after 2012 that go significantly beyond their Kyoto Protocol commitments.”[9]

Emission factors indicate that replacement of other fossil fuels by peat will lead to increased emissions per unit of energy produced (see above). The central aim of IPS in this debate, an increasing use of peat fuel facilitated by fiscal advantages, will therefore not lead to the lowering of CO₂ emissions. On the contrary, as this extra CO₂ source is not associated with an extra sink (see below), it will lead to increased CO₂ emissions that obstruct stabilisation of the CO₂ concentration in the atmosphere.

Superficiality…

In her diligence to ‘prove’ the climatic innocence of burning peat, IPS sums up a series of arguments that are irreconcilable. She claims, for example, that a minimum of 10 % of the fuel peat consists of young material (which is not true and not relevant) and proposes to concentrate peat extraction on agricultural peatlands (where young peat has already disappeared).

IPS states: “This means that, on average, each peat fuel load contains minimum of 10 % very young peat which, according to current criteria, is renewable biomass.

Comment: This statement is incorrect, also ‘on average’, even if it would be true that burning 300-year-old peat has the same impact on climate as burning 300-year-old biomass (it is not, see above). Everybody who has ever seen the extensive black plains where peat fuel is being extracted for many consecutive years can understand what is wrong here:

Fig. 3: The figure from the synthesis report of the IPCC Third Assessment Report that shows how CO₂ concentrations in the atmosphere continue to rise and only stabilize 100 to 300 years after the reduction of CO₂ emissions (www.ipcc.ch/pub/syreng.htm). Mäkilä (2006) misinterprets this figure to mean that fuels younger than 300 years old have no relevance for climate change.

The mean depth of geological peatlands in Finland is 1.4 m. More than 60 % of the geological peatland area does not reach this depth[10]. For economic reasons fuel peat extraction concentrates on peatlands where peat thickness is 1.5-2 m or more, i.e. on a part that is not representative of the total peatland area. This implies that on peat extraction sites much less than 10% of the peat is younger than 300 years. Mäkilä (2006) himself states that the amount of peat younger than 300 years in thicker mires is only 3-5%. And it will be even less when peatlands already drained for other purposes are used for peat extraction.

On former agricultural areas (where – according to the IPS letter – peat extraction would cause the least environmental harm), the young layers have long disappeared by oxidation, and the same applies, to a lesser extent, to peatlands drained for forestry (see below, Turunen 2004, 2007, Holmgren et al. 2006).

And last but not least, I would not be proud to preferentially destroy the uppermost layers of pristine peatlands. The biological, hydraulic and chemical properties of these layers are of utmost importance for maintaining and restoring peat accumulation capacity. In the same way that a person dies when you remove his skin, most peatlands – especially bogs – stop accumulating peat after removal of the uppermost layers and are much more difficult to restore (Joosten 1995). Focussing on the top-layer on the basis of the false assumption that this part is “renewable for climate consideration” (sic!) destroys the prospects for future peat accumulation and frustrates the very renewability you pursue. For maintaining and restoring the peat accumulating capacity it is better – if you do need to extract peat – to save as much area with an intact top layer as possible by extracting the deeper layers as well.[11]

So the choice is either to destroy pristine peatlands with their excellent capacity for carbon sequestration and storage or to focus on already drained peatlands. In the latter case – currently put forward as the right strategy in Sweden and Finland – it is both inappropriate and incorrect to use the ‘300 years’ argument.

The proof…

Her over-simplified way of reasoning shows that IPS does not (want to?) understand what the CO₂ problem and the climate change issue is all about.

IPS states: “What is said here proves that peat is very near to biomass fuels, much closer to them than fossil fuels.”

Comment: This closeness appears when you compare fuels on a time axis. Arithmetically, peat (with an age of say 4000 years) is then much closer to straw (with an age of 1 year) than to coal (with an age of 300 million years). But is such arithmetic of any relevance for the climate debate? Is burning lignite of 10 million years old better for the climate than burning oil shale of 500 million year old? Is burning last year’s straw better than burning 5-year-old willow coppice or 50-year-old wood?

This over-simplified way of reasoning above all proves that IPS does not (want to?) understand what the climate change issue is all about. Whether the CO₂ emitted to the atmosphere originates from coal or from biomass is irrelevant for the climate system and for global climate change. The fact that global deforestation leads to increased CO₂ emissions is not because forest is fossil and not-renewable (in fact it is neither). It is because the long-term steady-state biomass carbon store of – for example – tropical rainforest (210 tC/ha) is replaced by the much smaller biomass store of grassland (12 tC/ha)[12] and because the difference ends up in the atmosphere.

With respect to climate the important issue is whether the atmospheric CO₂ concentration is increasing or decreasing. Or – to put it differently – whether the CO₂ is released from a hitherto long-term stable store (like a coal or peat deposit) where, without exploitation, the carbon would have remained more or less indefinitely, or whether the CO₂ is released from a supply whose CO₂ would end up in the atmosphere on the short term anyhow (like wood or straw). The use of carbon-based fuels can only be climate neutral if you use material that would have oxidized soon anyway (i.e. merely redirect the carbon oxidation pathway) or use material that otherwise would not have existed (e.g. the extra biomass from well-aimed biofuel cultivation).

In climate politics this has been simplified by using the term ‘fossil fuel’ for carbon derived from the first group and the terms ‘renewable fuel’ and ‘biomass’ for the latter. In general, this simplification is valid because most biomass (e.g. agricultural straw or wood from boreal forests) is part of a rather rapidly cycling pool in which the biomass would again become CO₂ in the foreseeable future.

This is not so in the case of peatlands: in living peatlands (mires) part of the biomass carbon is split off from the rapidly cycling pool and stored in the long-term stable store called ‘peat’. In burning peat, even if it is ‘young peat’, you are consuming precisely that part that would otherwise remain withdrawn from the atmosphere for a very long time.

Old…

IPS incorrectly equates the concepts ‘non-renewable’ and ‘old’ which appear to be related but are not identical. Because she apparently does not understand the processes involved, she ignores the fact that coal – just like peat – is still being formed today, albeit with such a low rate of renewal that it is irrelevant for society.

IPS states: “It is unhelpful for IMCG to compare coal and lignite to peat since the time scales involved are so massively different and considering them in this way is misleading. Coal is not renewable in any timescale, only peat is. Coal does not accumulate but peat is when considered from a renewable point of view.”

Comments: The question is not whether differences are large but whether they are relevant. As has been explained above, peat fuel is not derived from a rapidly cycling pool, but from a long-term store. It is this qualitative difference that matters, not the quantitative difference of being more or less old. The difference is – so to say – a matter of direction, not of distance.

Furthermore, IPS is mistaken in the idea that something that is old (like coal) can not originate today. Of course it can. Every day, new people of 100 years old ‘originate’ when they have their 100^th birthday. Coals formation is – like living to become 100 years old – a long-term and slow process. But as the basic processes responsible for coal formation (peat accumulation, sedimentation and tectonics) have not changed over the past hundreds of millions of years new coal is being formed at this very moment as it has been forming for hundreds of millions of years (cf. fig. 5). The current rate of coal formation (= the volume that is originating today) is, however, much smaller than the current rate of coal consumption (= the volume of coal burnt today) and therefore irrelevant for our present day society. And the same applies to peat…

Fig. 5: SW-NE transect through South-Sumatra, showing a subduction area where peat is currently being buried and will – in time – change into coal. After Sieffermann 1988.

Unbalanced…

The ‘accounting’ of IPS is based on irrelevant comparisons, unjust claims, and false citations.

IPS states: “The total area of peatlands in Europe is estimated to be 514,882 km². … The total production area for fuel peat in the EU amounts to 1,750 km² (0.34% of total peatland area)

Comments: Again interesting information, but of no relevance for the discussion. The fact that the volume of coal currently consumed is only a minute fraction of the total coal reserves[13] does not make coal a climatically more innocuous fuel than oil of which the reserves are much smaller. And the same applies to peat.

IPS states: “The annual harvested peat in the world equals, according to Joosten and Clarke (2002), about 15 million tonnes of carbon. The present sequestration rate of carbon in all mires of the globe is estimated to be 40 - 70 million tonnes annually (Joosten, H. and Clarke, D. (2002) p. 35), thus exceeding the annual use of peat 3 - 6 times.”

Comments: As we have already been explaining for 10 years (Joosten 1997), this sustainability claim is wrong and unjust for a variety of reasons:

- In almost all individual countries of Europe, in the whole of Europe, and over the whole Earth the peat balance is negative, i.e. more peat is disappearing than is being formed (Joosten & Clarke 2002, cf. Hooijer et al. 2006). Next to the actual extraction of peat, enormous peat losses occur in agricultural, forested, burning and cutover peatlands. The peat lobby balances all of the gain (all peat accumulation in a country or a region) with only part of the losses (only from their peat extraction). Such procedure is unfair: Why should natural peat accumulation only compensate the losses caused by anthropogenic peat combustion and not also the collateral losses from peat extraction (drained neighbouring sites), and not also the losses caused by peatland agriculture and not also the losses caused by peatland forestry? It might be understandable (but irresponsible!) that the peat extraction and combustion lobby makes such an excessive demand, but it is inexcusable that IPS as a worldwide organisation representing all peatland-related interests supports such one-sided and short-sighted claim.

- The peat that is currently accumulating is not accumulating on the area allocated for peat extraction sites but ‘elsewhere’. Much of that peat is not available for exploitation, because of technical or conservational reasons. Peat that is not available is not a ‘resource’ and may – with respect to the sustainability of the fuel – not be used for balancing losses through peat combustion.

- Peat extraction and combustion not only implies burning peat but also destroying the peat accumulating capacity of the peatland ecosystem, i.e. destroying ‘renewability’ itself. If you extract peat from a large pristine bog, it may take a while before your annual extraction volume exceeds the annual peat accumulation in that bog. But unless peat is actively and rapidly regenerating on the cutover sites, extraction will come to an end because all resources will be gone (and all peat carbon will have ended up in the atmosphere). The area of cutover bogs that have successfully been restored to new long-term peat accumulating ecosystems is still negligible and only a minute fraction of the area degraded by peat extraction. With respect to the volume of peat, the relationship is even more negative as the cut-over and degraded peatlands of the world are losing much more peat than is regenerating (see above). ‘Renewability’ is nice, but for sustainability, peat accumulation really has to be renewed in cut-over sites.

- The peatlands ‘elsewhere’ whose CO₂ sequestration is claimed for balancing CO₂ emissions from peat combustion were already part of the greenhouse balance long before the anthropogenic rise of atmospheric CO₂-levels. To be climatically neutral an additional CO₂ source from peat combustion can only be compensated by an additional sink, not by already long-term existing peatlands.

IPS states: “The Geological Survey of Finland studied the Finnish peat reserves and found out that the country’s peat resources in the year 2000 equalled those of 1950 in spite of historical and today’s widespread use for agriculture and forestry (Turunen, J. 2004). Furthermore, Finland is a leading country in the industrial use of peat and its peatlands have been used also for the construction of water reservoirs and as a basis for road infrastructure. In spite of such use Finland’s peat carbon stocks are in balance.”

Comments: The IPS statement that “Finland’s peat carbon stocks are in balance” is again a grave misquote of the literature. In fact Turunen (2004) writes: “the use of peatlands, for example forestry drainage, agriculture, energy production, road building and peat harvesting have together decreased the total mire area and peat storages […]. The estimated decrease of total C storage (peat only) from 1950 to present was estimated as 4 - 74 Tg or 0.1 - 1.4 % of the original C storage.” This loss is of the same magnitude as the total Finnish peat extraction volume over the period 1950 – 2000 (39 Tg, Turunen 2004).

Most probably a considerable part of the increased ‘peat’ carbon sequestration after drainage will eventually turn out to be ‘litter’ (Joosten 2000) that would make the peat balance even more negative. “If a conservative estimate of 2.2 Tg yr^-1 (Minkkinen et al. 2002) for C accumulation into peat is used the total C storage of Finnish peatlands has decreased approximately 74-144 Tg” (Turunen 2004). In the revised version of his 2004 paper, Turunen (2007) comes to the conclusion that the C storage of peat in Finland has decreased with about 73 Tg, i.e. almost double the amount of the total peat extracted during that period (38.5 Tg)…

Sinks…

IPS pretends that the carbon dioxide losses from peat combustion can easily be compensated by subsequent restoration or reclamation of the cut-over peatlands. Because of the disproportional carbon content of peatlands this claim is wrong.

IPS states: “Many peatlands in Europe, which were drained and used for agriculture and forestry in the past, are now sources of green house gases owing to degradation and oxidation of the unsaturated peat layer.

Comments: Correct, but a surprising statement after you just have (falsely) claimed that the peat carbon stock in Finland has not decreased in spite of draining 60 % of the peatland area…

IPS states: “If these areas are not significant sources of food or other income for local people, they could be used for peat production and transformed afterwards relatively easily to carbon sinks. This could be done by restoring them to peat-forming mires, by reclaiming them to forests or by planting energy crops. These types of carbon sinks will be needed in coming decades.”

Comments: Peatlands from which the peat is extracted and that afterwards are restored to mires, forests or energy crop plantations are not net sinks but net sources of carbon, because the growing biomass stock cannot, within a measurable time, compensate the carbon losses from the extracted peat stock (cf. Holmgren 2006). This is clear when you consider that a peatland in the boreal zone on average contains at least 7 times more carbon per ha than old forest on mineral soil (IPCC 2001, Alexeyev & Birdsey 1998). As peat extraction focuses on deeper peatlands than average (see above) this discrepancy is even larger.

Furthermore, the question of whether “peat production areas can be turned into carbon sinks” is not relevant for the climate debate. The question is whether they factually are turned into carbon sinks. A rapid survey of IMCG (2006) has shown that restoration to new peat accumulating ecosystems is currently happening on only a minute proportion of cut-over peatlands. The vast majority of cut-over peatlands continue to emit carbon from the remaining peat.

IPS states: “The possibility to reuse energy peat production sites as new carbon sinks is another difference between peatlands and fossil fuel producing coal mines and oil wells.”

Comments: Again an untrue statement. At present, it is common policy to rehabilitate open cast lignite and coal mines to – for example – forests (e.g. Peka-Gociniak 2006, Sperow 2006, Ussiri et al. 2006). Depleted gas and oil reservoirs are prime candidates for CO₂ storage (IPCC 2005[15]). All these reuse options, however, do not make lignite, coal, gas or oil into climate neutral fuels. Similarly, after use of cut-over peatlands does not make peat climatically neutral.

IPS states: “This difference is clearly shown in life cycle analyses.”

Comments: This is first of all not true (see below). Furthermore, it is again comparing apples with oranges: the after use options are simply not included in most life cycle analyses of the other fossil fuels (e.g. Pingoud et al 1999, Nilsson & Nilsson 2004, Holmgren et al. 2006).

Comparisons

To delude into thinking that peat combustion is climatically innocent, IPS compares it with the worst and most senseless use of peatlands: having them abandoned and keeping them drained. Even compared with that, the climatic effects of combustion are worse.

The scenario results are furthermore flawed by using a 300 years perspective instead of the normal and internationally accepted standard of 100 years. In this way results look much less negative than they are.

IPS states: “A very recent report by the VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland (Kirkinen, Hillebrand and Savolainen, 2007) concluded that the climate impact of peat per energy unit is, over a 300 years’ perspective, about 10% of the impact of coal, if the peat is produced from former agricultural areas, and roughly more than half of the impact of coal, if peat is produced from fertile areas drained for forestry.”

Comments: Former agricultural areas and drained eutrophic peatlands are huge emittors of the greenhouse gases (GHG) carbon dioxide (CO₂) and nitrous oxide (N₂O). In several countries impressive rewetting activities are undertaken to reduce these GHG emissions (e.g. in Germany, Poland, Belarus, cf. Joosten & Augustin 2006). IPS thus compares the GHG effect of peat extraction and combustion with the worst and most senseless use of peatlands: to have them abandoned and keep them drained.

Only in comparison to such senseless and damaging waste peat extraction for fuel looks just a little bit worse (but still worse!) on the GHG emission scale. To present that as a positive fact is perverse.

This way of reasoning is similar to pretending that burning coal leads to no extra CO₂ emission when you use coal that would burn anyhow, e.g. that from burning coal seams (cf. Prakash & Gupta 1999[16], fig. 6), that only in China emit 75 – 350 Mtonnes of CO₂ per year (Voigt et al. 2004[17]). Instead of solving the problem, the problem is abused for covering up own weaknesses.

Fig. 6: Burning coal seams in China, the parallel to drained and abandoned agricultural peatlands. According to IPS reasoning a source of low climate impact fuel. Photo: Anupma Prakash, www.ehponline.org/docs/2002/110-5/forum.html

The gas that Russia is providing for energy generation in Europe would – with the same crooked reasoning – be carbon neutral, because the Russians would otherwise burn it off. Actually, burning Russian gas should even entitle you to carbon credits, because otherwise it (methane) would be released directly into the air. By burning this methane, you decrease the greenhouse effect…

The last logical step in this questionable way of reasoning would be the claim that peat extraction is climatically neutral when it takes place on areas where peat extraction anyhow would take place…

And again IPS is extremely selective in citing from the literature. Figures 7 and fig. 8 below clearly show that almost all peat fuel life cycles (which include mitigating after use options for peatland but not for coal…) lead to greater radiative forcing than coal. Only peat extraction from agricultural peatlands with subsequent afforestation leads to lower values.

But even in these extreme cases the radiative forcing remains positive, i.e. climate heating. Holmgren (2006), who included afforestation after use both in the peat and coal life cycle analyses found that – all other things being equal – the use of fuel peat led to higher radiative forcing than the use coal.

Interesting is again the use of the “300 years’ perspective”, instead of the internationally accepted standard reference time frame of 100 years (see above). A reason for focussing on this deviating time frame becomes immediately clear from figures 7 and 8. On the normal 100 years timeframe hardly any difference in radiative forcing can be observed between the different peat and coal extraction scenarios. The differences become clearer only when taking a longer-term view.

In discussions on the carbon storage effect of peatland drainage in relation to afforestation the opposite trend is observed: the effects are positive in the first decennia and change to the negative only after 100 years (with cutting) resp. 300 – 400 years (without cutting of the forest) (Laine & Minkkinen 1996).

This shows how sensitive perceived climate effects are to the chosen period of observation and illustrates the necessity of using standard time frames (without neglecting the other ones!).

It furthermore demonstrates how easily the outcomes of scenario studies can be manipulated by a seemingly innocent alteration of the time frames.

Wise

IPS ignores the fact that the joint IPS/IMCG Wise Use approach is not about concrete outcomes and decisions but about the quality of the process leading to outcomes and decisions. The limited ability and willingness to exchange ideas and information show that IPS has not sufficiently assimilated the Wise Use philosophy.

IPS states: “The IPS has combined with IMCG to develop a procedure for the reasoned and wise use of peat and peatlands globally (Joosten, H. and Clarke, D., 2002). This contains sound advice for the peat industry that, in turn, has to follow the ‘wise use’ approach.”

Comments: The Wise Use book distinguishes between different types of conflicts. The difference in opinion as to whether peat combustion is harmful to the climate or not is clearly a ‘conflict dealing with facts’. A consensus about such questions can, according to Joosten & Clarke (2002), easily be reached when

-     all parties involved really want to know the right answer;

-     agreement exists on the content of the terms (in this case words like ‘peat’, ‘peatland’, ‘fossil’, ‘renewable’, ‘biomass’ etc.) and the period of time and the location and area under consideration; and

-     all available information on the subject is exchanged.

The selective use of data, the aberrant use of terms and concepts, and the limited willingness to exchange ideas and information in an open discourse, give the impression that IPS does not really want to know the right (state-of-the-art) answer.

IPS states: “In most cases previous extraction sites are destined to become CO₂ sinks again.”

Comments: But only after the original stores have been turned by peat extraction into such large CO₂ sources that the mentioned sinks cannot compensate for thousands of years…

IPS states: “In conclusion, in order to put CO₂ emissions into context, it is important to emphasise that most of the carbon liberated from peatland in the world today is taking place in tropical Southeast Asia where, in 1997, between 0.87 and 2.57 Billion tonnes of carbon (equivalent to 2.9-8.5 Bt CO₂) were released to the atmosphere as a result of forest and peat fires in Indonesia in only 4 months (Page, et.al. 2002).”

Comments: An obvious attempt to play down own weaknesses by pointing at problems of others. A problem may look smaller by comparison with bigger problems, but in reality the problem remains as big as it is.

Fig. 7: Cumulative radiative forcing of different peat chains and a coal chain as a function of time. From: Holmgren et al. 2006.

Fig. 8: Cumulative radiative forcing of different peat chains and a coal chain as a function of time. In Vision chain A peat is extracted with a new peat cutting technology from a forestry drained peatland that is afforested afterwards. In Vision chain B peat is extracted by the new technology from a cultivated peatland that is is afforested afterwards. From: Kirkinen et al. 2007.

IPS states: “In the 10 years since then it is estimated that an average of around 2 Bt of CO₂ is released every year from peatland in Southeast Asia as a result of peatland deforestation, drainage, degradation and fire. This is equivalent to about 30% of global CO₂ emissions from fossil fuels (Hooijer et al., 2006, p.29).”

Comments: IPS has a peculiar way with dealing with ‘references to key sources’. Hooijer et al. (2006) write on p. 29 about “a total CO₂ emission figure for SE Asian peatlands of 2000 Mt/y …, equivalent to almost 8% of global emissions from fossil fuel burning” (our underling). Is this again just a mistake or a primitive attempt to try and play down the importance of peat fuel in the peatland associated climate debate?

IPS states: “The European Union should focus especially on wise use of tropical peatlands in agriculture and forestry in order to prevent senseless release of CO₂ in to the atmosphere.”

Comments: The EU will earn more credibility in countries with huge peatland emission problems if she first puts her own affairs straight. How should she otherwise explain that peat fuel burning in Europe is considered to be climatically innocent and peat soil burning in SE Asia a threat to the global climate?

Misguided…

IPS states: “The IPS is of the view that peat is a much more acceptable fuel from a climate impact point of view than fossil fuels

Comments: A view that is in conflict with the facts cannot contribute to a wise use of peatlands (Joosten & Clarke 2002).

IPS states: “and peat can be used in a wise way for the benefit of mankind now and in the future.”

Comments: At least that is a position we share!

IPS states: “On behalf of the Executive Board of IPS, with the guidance of the Scientific Advisory Board of IPS,

Comments: I would not know where to hide for shame as a scientist if I had guided such a letter… Furthermore, I would feel abused if I would discover that the letter that I had ‘guided’ was send to the European Commission on February 22, made public on the IPS website on March 7 (pdf file created on 07.03.2007 at 07.58.43 h AM), and only then discussed at the IPS Scientific Advisory Board meeting in Tullamore on March 9…

Conclusion

Back to the question addressed in the title of this contribution: is the IPS a fossil or renewable, i.e. markedly outdated and old-fashioned or able to address the challenges of a changing world?

The letter to the European Commission shows that the Society has at least started to try and discuss important issues. That is certainly progress compared to the approach of 10 years ago. The weakness of the contribution – full of crooked reasoning, inconsistencies, naturalistic fallacies, half-truths, manipulations and mistakes – however, irresistibly forces the old saying of Ovid upon me: Ut desint vires tamen est laudanda voluntas: though the power be lacking, the will is to be praised all the same.

Maybe ‘slowly renewable’ would be the appropriate label for IPS under these circumstances. But it is clear that until now IPS’s rate of renewal is – similar to that of peat – too slow to be relevant for society.

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