Natural England have released a comprehensive report on the Carbon Storage and Sequestration by Habitat 2021. It describes in detail the role different types of natural habits in Britain play in capturing carbon from the atmosphere.

This comes weeks before the Environment Agency plan to release a similar report ‘Achieving Net Zero carbon emissions – a review of the evidence behind carbon offsetting’. However, the EA report is more focused on the most suitable approaches the EA can take to offset its own emissions. It reviews 17 carbon offsetting approaches (mostly nature based) and rates them based on criteria including readiness, speed, permanence, cost, co-benefits, risks etc.

The high-level messages from both reports are very similar. The habitats with greatest potential for carbon storage are planting trees and peat restoration. Peat based soils being able to store a considerable amount more carbon than other soils. Protecting and restoring saltmarshes and sea grass meadows around England’s coastlines and marine areas could help store significant levels of carbon, at the same time as helping protecting coastlines from climate impacts. Natural England’s report claims one hectare of saltmarsh