Life Cycle Assessment of Peat Extraction Towards Peat-bog Reconversion Strategies: Scenarios Comparison Based on a Real Case Study from a Latvian Peat Extraction Factory

This study evaluates the environmental and economic performance of alternative reconversion strategies for drained peatlands following industrial extraction, using a real case study from Latvia. In alignment with the EU Nature Restoration Law, three main restoration pathways were analysed (i.e., renaturalization, afforestation, and blueberry cultivation), each modelled through a 100-year Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and Life Cycle Costing (LCC) framework. The LCA focused on greenhouse-gas (GHG) emissions, while the economic assessment included implementation costs, revenues, and the monetary value of ecosystem services. Results show that maintaining drained peatlands is the most unsustainable option (756.65 t CO₂ eq ha⁻¹). Renaturalization and blueberry cultivation reduce emissions by 225.49 t CO₂ eq ha⁻¹ and 258.45 t CO₂ eq ha⁻¹, respectively, whereas afforestation demonstrates the highest mitigation potential, achieving carbon neutrality after 67 years and a net GHG uptake of 310.09 t CO₂ eq ha⁻¹ by year 100. Integrating renewable-energy systems further enhances performance, with afforestation combined with solar or wind installations yielding additional avoided emissions exceeding 500 t CO₂ eq ha⁻¹. Economically, blueberry cultivation provides the largest direct revenues, while afforestation yields the highest carbon-credit value. However, when ecosystem services are monetized, renaturalization becomes the most beneficial strategy, reaching a cumulative value of € 31.2 million ha⁻¹. Overall, the study highlights that combining LCA and LCC provides robust decision support for sustainable peatland management, demonstrating that rewetting and afforestation can effectively balance climate-mitigation goals with socio-economic viability. Furthermore, the economic outcomes are strongly influenced by the ecosystem-service monetisation methodology used; the assumptions and limitations of this approach are now fully clarified in the Methods and discussed as a source of uncertainty. Given the limited availability of long-term field data, the analysis is based on deterministic scenarios without explicit uncertainty ranges, variability estimates, or sensitivity analyses. Likewise, N₂O fluxes could not be included due to the lack of robust, site-specific emission factors for restored peatlands.