Land Sector and Removals Standard: Emissions Accounting and Disclosure

GHG Protocol: The accompanying Land Sector and Removals Guidance will be published in June 2026. The LSR Guidance V1.0 will incorporate the feedback received during the public consultation of the 2022 draft. It will include complementary guidance on the LSR Standard requirements including examples and case studies, as well as calculation guidance including equations.

Additional resources will follow, such as a reporting template that will support companies developing their inventories.

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CDP: All organizations responding to CDP will see questions 7.12 “Does your organization have significant land sector activities in its operations or value chain?” and 7.13 ““Does your organization choose to account for and report technological CO2 removals or captured CO2 with geologic storage, or have you done so in previous years?”. If the answer to either of these questions is “No”, they can specify this and explain how they have assessed this. Organizations can also indicate in these questions that they have not evaluated this yet.

GHG Protocol: Version 1 of the LSR Standard and Guidance does not apply to forestry, as it does not provide comprehensive requirements for companies that own or control forest land or are in forest product value chains. However, it does provide requirements to account for and report biomass carbon stock changes on productive agricultural lands (e.g., in agroforestry and silvopasture systems), land use change emissions from the conversion of natural forests to plantation forests, and land management production emissions due to activities on forest lands.

Future versions of this Standard and Guidance may include comprehensive requirements for forestry and non-productive lands. To inform the future approach on forest carbon accounting and related topics and to motivate methodological advances for corporate GHG accounting in the forest sector, the GHG Protocol will release a request for information on forest carbon accounting in 2026.

Additional details can be found in question 5 and 6 in the Frequently Asked Questions: Land Sector and Removals (LSR) Standard and Box 1.1 and 9.1 in the Land Sector and Removals Standard Version 1.0.

CDP: If organizations with Forestry activities have previously reported to question 7.12.3, they may continue to do so in 2026 but should be transparent about their chosen methodology in the “Please explain” column. If organizations are seeing this question for the first time and have not calculated these emissions, they can leave the question blank (rather than entering 0s). This question will be reviewed in future and may be replaced by a question that more closely aligns with the LSR Standard.

Note that the question asking about LSR Standard accounting subcategories (7.12.1) will not appear if an organization selects "Yes, these activities are only related to forest lands and/or non-productive, non-forest lands" in column "Indicate if these activities are only related to forest lands and/or non-productive, non-forest lands" of 7.12.

GHG Protocol: The Corporate Standard (2004) requires companies to separately report biogenic CO2 emissions. Companies to which the LSR Standard is applicable shall only report biogenic product CO2 emissions from non-food and non-feed biogenic products separately if they report all lifecycle GHG emissions and leakage associated with the biogenic product. For example, gross biogenic CO₂ emissions from biofuel combustion shall be reported separately from the physical GHG inventory if lifecycle GHG emissions and leakage associated with the biofuel feedstock’s production are accounted for and reported, which includes associated land emissions from carbon stock losses and leakage. If lifecycle GHG emissions or leakage are not reported, gross biogenic product CO₂ emissions from biofuel combustion shall be reported in the physical GHG inventory.

For food and feed biogenic products and biogenic waste companies are required to report gross biogenic CO2 emissions separately from the physical GHG inventory.

For all biogenic products, companies are also required to report CH4 and N2O emissions from biogenic products within the physical GHG inventory.

CDP: In the CDP 2026 Full Corporate Questionnaire, organizations in the Metals & Mining sector will see question 7.12.2, provided they have selected “Yes, in our direct operations” or “Yes, in both our direct operations and our upstream/downstream value chain” in response to 7.12 column “Agriculture, forestry or other land sector activities”.

If the organization has calculated biogenic emissions, they can report them in 7.12.2 in alignment with the GHG Protocol Corporate Standard. If the organization is seeing this question for the first time and has not yet calculated biogenic emissions, they can leave this question blank (rather than entering 0). This question will be reviewed in future and may be replaced by a question that more closely aligns with the LSR Standard.

CDP: Organizations setting FLAG targets are recommended by SBTi to estimate FLAG emissions in alignment with the GHG Protocol LSR Standard.

If an organization has set a FLAG target, they can report it in the targets section of the CDP Full Corporate Questionnaire (7.53.1 or 7.53.2), indicating so in column “Land-related emissions covered by target”. The organization should specify the types of land emissions covered by the target in the “Explain target coverage and identify any exclusions” column.

The organization may not be able to disclose all FLAG emissions in their inventory in alignment with the LSR Standard in 2026. However, if they wish to do so, they can use the reporting guidance provided to report specific LSR accounting subcategories (such as in 7.12.3). If doing so, they should provide details of their methodology throughout their response.

GHG Protocol: To ensure removed CO2 remains stored, companies must have an ongoing monitoring plan to detect any future losses of stored carbon that may return to the atmosphere. Monitoring may be conducted by a single entity or multiple entities (e.g. the reporting company, value chain partners or other third-party service providers). Companies may define a series of consecutive, sequential time intervals that are renewed over time to define discrete time periods to implement the ongoing monitoring requirement.

Companies must account for and report net land carbon stock losses of previously reported CO2 removals in the year the losses occur. If companies lose the ability to monitor land carbon stocks associated with previously reported removals or if the monitoring plan is not renewed, companies must assume previously reported removals are emitted and report reversals from land-based storage. See more details in Requirement 23 and 23.LMR.

Chapter 12 of the LSR Standard provides additional options that companies can apply to help manage permanence. The LSR Guidance will provide additional information as well.

GHG Protocol: Chapter 15 provides requirements and recommendations on accounting for the storage of biogenic and TCDR-based carbon that is physically contained in product carbon pools. Product carbon storage is not reported as a removal or emission but instead as a separate and optional accounting category.

Product carbon storage is reported separately from removals due to challenges with meeting the removal requirements. However, biochar could be reported as a land management CO2 removal when it is applied to soils and stored in the land carbon pool and if all requirements for land management CO2 removals are met.