Comparative Life Cycle Assessment of Biomass from Drained and Rewetted Peatlands

Le résumé fourni par la source

The drainage of peatlands leads to greenhouse gas emissions and other negative impacts on the environment, while at the same time enabling the production of common agricultural products. The negative environmental impacts can be can be reduced by rewetting. Rewetting of drained peatlands may but does not exclude continued land-use. Vegetation established after rewetting can be managed with adapted techniques (so-called paludiculture). How should peatlands be used? This paper presents energy and greenhouse gas balances for different land use options for drained and rewetted peatlands. Using a life cycle assessment approach, the energy demand and greenhouse gas emissions of crop production on drained and rewetted peatlands were estimated. The results show that the drained use of peatlands leads to significant greenhouse gas emissions offsetting all savings obtained by substituting equivalent products such as fossil fuels. But the rewetted use of peatlands is connected to significant greenhouse gas emissions too. Nonetheless only the use of biomass from rewetted peatlands offers under certain conditions a promising potential for saving greenhouse gas emissions and energy.

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