Groundbreaking research reveals cost of maintaining restored peatland

The document compiles maintenance expectations, considerations and costs in the years following restoration work to provide a clearer picture of the long-term expenses associated with peatland recovery.

The report is expected to help facilitate the long-term financial planning of projects while strengthening confident investment within the sector to drive forward large-scale peatland restoration.

Its publication comes shortly after Environment Secretary, Steve Reed, urged for greater private investment in nature restoration as part of a wider call for evidence on how to incentivise UK businesses to support high-integrity nature recovery projects. 

Freddie Ingleby, Managing Director of Caledonian Climate, said of the document:

“Private investment in peatland restoration is desperately needed if the UK’s net zero decarbonisation targets are to be met. However, far too often, investors lack the information, confidence and security to invest in nature recovery.

“Post-restoration maintenance costs are scarcely reported and where they are, they can be grouped with other ongoing costs leaving them undefined. With ongoing maintenance work a necessity to ensure the success of peatland restoration sites in the UK, it is prudent that associated costs are made clear and known from the outset.”

Monitoring and maintenance of peatland restoration sites is essential for preserving the integrity of the initial work, ongoing site recovery, and the protection of capital investments. Underperforming peatland sites risk not delivering the biodiversity uplift nor yielding the expected carbon emission reductions, thereby devaluing associated carbon units and failing to attract premium pricing in the UK’s carbon market.

Informed by insights from across the UK peatland restoration community, with data collated from multiple restoration sites, the white paper findings indicate that despite the value of adequately maintaining restoration sites, there were often no formal obligations for long-term maintenance, leaving sites exposed to the risk of reversal towards the pre-restoration condition.

Freddie added, “Our research, led by Research Associate Alison Hope, suggests that the financial consequences of neglecting peatland maintenance from the outset, could ultimately exceed the cost of the original restoration, demonstrating the critical need to invest in ongoing maintenance for both reaching net-zero targets and protecting the initial capital spend.”

Paul Leadbitter, Peatland Programme Manager at the North Pennines National Landscape team, commented:

“The findings from this paper are hugely revealing and hold significant implications for how peatland restoration maintenance is conducted and funded in the UK. 

“One of the challenges to attracting green finance at scale is the unknown factor of ongoing maintenance costs. We were able to bring together the UK peatland community to look at these issues and the resulting report provides a considered estimation of maintenance costs over the short and long term.

“This research allows greater scope for robust financial planning, supporting this vital nature restoration into the future.”

With many peatland restoration projects in the UK in their infancy, the true cost of long-term maintenance will be revealed in the decades to come, however, the consensus within the sector is that maintenance costs will be greatest nearer the beginning of projects (year 0-5) and reduce over project lifetimes.

This work aims to catalyse and encourage an acceleration in nature-positive private investment in UK peatland restoration and help the wider community estimate future maintenance costs more accurately.

A summary of the findings can be found here.

The full white paper can be downloaded here.