The world’s leading standard setter for calculating greenhouse gas emissions has released its first set of rules for measuring agricultural land-use emissions and carbon dioxide removals.
To continue reading, subscribe to Eco‑Business.
There's something for everyone. We offer a range of subscription plans.
- Access our stories and receive our Insights Weekly newsletter with the free EB Member plan.
- Unlock unlimited access to our content and archive with EB Circle.
- Publish your content with EB Premium.
On 30 January, the Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Protocol launched the Land Sector and Removals (LSR) Standard, aimed at standardising corporate GHG disclosures for agriculture and land use change.
The sector accounts for roughly a quarter of global emissions but to date, there has been no global standard for companies to report GHG emissions caused by land use changes related to agriculture, the standard setter said in a press statement.
“The new LSR Standard fills a major gap by providing clear requirements for corporate climate accounting of land-sector impacts and by establishing robust safeguards for companies that choose to account for removals – both natural and technological – in their GHG inventories,” it added.
Leading sustainable palm oil certifier, Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) said: “The new standard will hold the sector to greater accountability and strengthen industry best practice.”
RSPO told Eco-Business that its certified members, which accounted for 39 per cent of global palm oil production in 2024, are already meeting many of the LSR Standard’s key requirements through its PalmGHG V5 tool, which enables oil palm growers to estimate and monitor their GHG emissions.
“For the past two years, RSPO has been working together with the World Resources Institute (WRI) and World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) to ensure alignment between the GHG Protocol accounting standard and the PalmGHG V5,” it said.
WRI and WBCSD jointly developed and launched the GHG Protocol over 20 years ago in an effort to standardise GHG accounting and reporting. The standard is currently the basis for most of the world’s corporate and national emissions reporting, and efforts are underway to harmonise it with those of global standards setter, the International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO).
For the latest LSR Standard, more than 4,000 public comments were received and 300 external reviewers involved in its creation, which took five years. It has been tested by 96 companies and supporting partners.
The standards will take effect on 1 January, 2027, giving companies almost a year to prepare to adopt them.
Singapore-headquartered palm oil firm Musim Mas welcomed the LSR Standard, describing it as a “timely and important step toward improving clarity, consistency, and comparability in the accounting of land-based emissions and removals.” Musim Mas is also an RSPO member and has a 2050 net zero target approved by the Science Based Targets initiative, a standard that uses the GHG Protocol as its foundational framework.
Olivier Tichit, the firm’s director of communications and sustainability, told Eco-Business that the firm is reviewing the document and its requirements to determine the full extent of potential changes.
“We anticipate that some refinements to methodologies, data availability, and internal processes may be needed, subject to further clarification of the standard,” he said.
Traceability required
GHG Protocol said that any company with significant land-sector activities in its operations or value chain will need to follow the LSR Standard to conform with GHG Protocol’s voluntary framework.
“The LSR Standard was designed for companies of any size and at any point in the value chain, including producers, buyers, and sellers of agricultural products,” it said.
The standard is also the first of GHG Protocol’s to require traceability for indirect emissions, also known as Scope 3 emissions. In the agricultural industry, this includes emissions by farmers, suppliers and other intermediaries along the supply chain.
GHG Protocol said that companies are given flexibility based on the information they have about the products they source.
“When companies have visibility into where their products are grown, the traceability rules enable companies to account for climate benefits from those farms while preventing double counting, greenwashing and other fraudulent claims,” the standard setter said.
In progress: forest carbon accounting
The latest standard encountered two “complex issues” related to agricultural leakage and forest carbon accounting, the GHG Protocol said.
On agricultural leakage, which refers to emissions occurring from the displacement of food or feed production, the standard setter determined that companies should account for and report these impacts separately.
Meanwhile, rules related to forest carbon – which measures the changes in the carbon stock of forests – will be developed and included in the LSR standard later. The GHG Protocol cited differences in perspectives across academicians and practitioners, both from scientific and feasibility perspectives, for the delay.
“Both science and feasibility are core design principles of GHG Protocol standards, and more time is required to ensure that both are appropriately met,” it said. “Therefore, to avoid delaying the release of the wider LSR Standard, the GHG Steering Committee decided that forest carbon accounting would not feature in this version of the LSR Standard.”
“Instead, a request for information will soon be issued to gather stakeholder input on how forest carbon accounting can best feature in a future update of the LSR Standard, which would be preceded by further field testing around the world.”
Until then, companies which choose to report their forest carbon impacts should be transparent about their chosen methodology, GHG Protocol said.
RSPO said, “The picture isn’t complete for forest-related commodities until the requirements…covering forestry and non-productive land areas are released.”
The standards must also account for carbon sequestered by agricultural best practices such as soil management, reforestation and rehabilitation, it added.
“RSPO will review and assess where further alignment is needed once the removals requirements for forestry and non-productive land areas are included in the LSR standard,” it said.
