Implementation of an emissions inventory for UK peatlands: a report to the Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy

This report summarises work undertaken on behalf of the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) to develop and implement a new method for reporting greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from peatlands in the UK’s emissions inventory. The work builds on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 2013 Wetlands Supplement, by providing empirically-based and UK-specific ‘Tier 2’ estimates of emissions from a representative range of peat land-use and condition categories. It collates consistent spatial information on peat extent and condition from each of the four UK administrations, as well as the most peat-rich Crown Dependencies and Overseas Territories (Isle of Man and Falkland Islands respectively). These data were used to assess the overall extent and condition of UK peatlands; to estimate change in condition over the period from 1990 to 2013; to implement the first UK-wide inventory of peatland GHG emissions over this period; and to project future peat-derived GHG emissions through to 2050 based on a set of five illustrative scenarios.