About the event

UKCEH roundtable tackling the barriers, policies and paths to adoption for biochar on wet peat soils.

Summary

Lowland peat soils are the UK’s largest terrestrial source of greenhouse gas emissions when drained and degraded. This UKCEH roundtable focuses on how to reverse that direction of travel by combining permanent rewetting (paludiculture or wet peat management) with biochar, aiming to shift rewetted peat systems from a net source back into a significant, durable carbon sink.

Event description

UKCEH is convening a roundtable to tackle the barriers, policies, and practical pathways for responsible biochar use on rewetted peat soils in the UK, with the goal of turning lowland peat from a major emissions source back into a significant sink through robust, long-term carbon dioxide removal (CDR).

The discussion centres on how carbon crediting methodologies, environmental regulation, and incentive structures currently interact to constrain deployment, and how these systems might evolve to enable credible, long-term CDR in rewetted peat.

UKCEH is undertaking research into paludiculture (wet farming) and how it could be enhanced through biochar integration. Biochar is produced worldwide using a wide range of feedstocks, technologies, and production temperatures, creating materials with very different properties and levels of carbon stability. UKCEH’s research focuses particularly on lower-temperature materials that typically have lower intrinsic stability, and explores whether rewetting and anoxic peat conditions can improve longevity as a long-term carbon store.

The event brings together researchers, regulators, carbon credit standards, and industry for short framing inputs followed by moderated roundtable discussion, focused on four linked barriers:

1. Carbon crediting and permanence: Voluntary carbon market methodologies typically operationalise permanence through stability thresholds (often H/Corg ratios) alongside constraints on feedstock and production conditions. This can exclude lower-temperature materials, despite emerging evidence that environmental context matters, particularly in rewetted, anoxic peat soils.
2. Regulation on wet soils: Current Environment Agency guidance limits application rates and restricts spreading to waterlogged soils due to runoff, leaching, and water quality concerns. Rewetted peatlands often fall within or close to “waterlogged” categories, limiting feasibility regardless of potential climate benefit.
3. Incentives and credit allocation: Credits often accrue to biochar producers, while farmers and peatland managers take on operational and regulatory risk and commit to long-term land management change with limited direct return.
4. Wider system considerations: Site heterogeneity, irreversibility and legacy effects, long-term archives and heritage considerations, and public perception and trust may shape acceptability and feasibility in different rewetting pathways, including paludiculture.

Who should attend

• Researchers working on peatlands, paludiculture, biochar, and CDR
• Regulators and policy teams
• Carbon credit standards and assurance bodies
• Biochar producers and supply chain organisations
• Land managers and farming representatives involved in lowland peat and wet farming transitions
• Environmental NGOs and peatland restoration delivery organisations