Finland’s Dirty Secret: Extracting Peat for Energy
Whilst peat for energy production is not in the global consciousness in the same way as its little brother coal, the extraction of peat, shares many of the same detrimental traits. It is an outdated, old-fashioned practice to win energy and adds with a total of twenty-three point eight million tons of carbon dioxide a year, (more than twice the emissions of Finnish road, rail, boat) to climate change.
In addition to the huge impact on global warming, water pollution in the rivers and lakes, surrounding peat extraction sites, is yet another big environmental threat. Even though peat contributes only in small parts to the Baltic Sea being the worlds largest body of brackish water, the polluted head-waters, filled with organic matter from Finnish peat production, ultimately end up in the Baltic Sea.
Maren Krings