Peat products

Peat (turf) is an accumulation of partially decayed vegetation or organic matter that is unique to natural areas called peat land or mires. The peat land ecosystem is the most efficient carbon sink on the planet because peat land plants capture CO2,which is naturally released from themselves. In natural peat lands the annual rate of biomass production is greater than the rate of decomposition, but it takes thousands of years for the peat land to develop the deposit of 1,5-2 m, which is the average depth of the boreal plants.

Peat is not usually regarded as a renewable source of energy, as its extraction rate in industrial countries far exceeds its slow growth of 1 mm per year. Because of this the UN and other organisations affiliated with UN classified peat as a fossil fuel. However, the Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change (IPCC) has begun to classify peat as a “slow renewable fuel”. In Sweden and Finland peat is traditionally used as a biofuel by some power and heating plants. Industries prefer to pay a carbon tax but still are using quite big amounts of peat in a form of sod peat or peat briquettes.  Peat pellets has also been offered as a fuel form: