GHG Protocol Land Sector and Removals Standard: what changes in 2027

The GHG Protocol's Land Sector and Removals Standard takes effect on 1 January 2027. It gives companies a common way to account for agricultural emissions, land-use change and qualifying carbon dioxide removals, but it does not allow those removals to disappear into a single net emissions number.

The change matters because land has long sat awkwardly inside corporate carbon accounts. A farm can emit methane and nitrous oxide, lose carbon when land use changes and remove carbon through soil management. A company can also contract direct air capture or store biogenic carbon dioxide underground. Until now, those activities have not shared one detailed Greenhouse Gas Protocol accounting framework.

The Land Sector and Removals (LSR) Standard begins to close that gap. Companies can use 2026 to update systems and collect the data needed for the first reporting year. The standard applies from the start of 2027, so companies reporting calendar-year 2027 emissions will normally publish the first compliant inventories in 2028.

What the standard changes

The LSR Standard adds requirements for activities that the Corporate Standard and Scope 3 Standard did not cover in enough detail. It deals with emissions from agricultural production and land-use change, carbon stored in land and products, and technological carbon dioxide removals such as direct air capture with geological storage.

The standard therefore changes more than a calculation sheet. It asks companies to connect land and removal figures to locations, activities, value-chain relationships and storage records that can be followed over time.

Who has to use it

The mandatory part applies to companies with significant land-sector activities in Scope 1 or Scope 3. Food, agriculture, apparel, retail, bioenergy and other businesses with material agricultural supply chains are the clearest examples. A company with no significant land activity does not suddenly have to build a farm-level inventory merely because the standard exists.

The removal rules work differently. Reporting removals is optional, but a company that chooses to include land or technological removals in its greenhouse gas inventory must follow the standard's accounting and disclosure requirements. That distinction matters for businesses outside agriculture. A technology company buying durable removal, for example, may need the removal provisions even if its own operations have little land exposure.

The standard sits inside the wider GHG Protocol accounting system. It does not replace the Corporate Standard or the Scope 1, Scope 2 and Scope 3 structure. It adds the methods needed when land emissions, biological carbon or removals enter those scopes.

Emissions and removals stay separate

One of the most important design choices is the requirement to report gross emissions and removals separately. A company cannot simply deduct removals from land emissions and present the remainder as if both sides carried the same certainty.

That separation makes the inventory easier to interrogate. Readers can see whether a reported improvement came from reducing methane, fertiliser emissions or land conversion, or from adding a removal estimate elsewhere. It also prevents a temporary land sink from quietly masking a persistent fossil or agricultural emission.

The standard permits companies to report a net land-sector figure as additional information, but the underlying gross figures must remain available. The result should be a more informative carbon account: reductions can be judged as reductions, while removals can be judged against their own storage and monitoring evidence.

A removal needs more than a tonne

The LSR Standard does not treat every claimed tonne of removed carbon dioxide as interchangeable. A removal has to be linked to a process, a reporting boundary and a storage pathway. The company must account for the emissions created across the removal's lifecycle, including energy, transport and processing where relevant.

Land removals also carry a reversal problem. Soil or biomass carbon can return to the atmosphere after a change in management, drought, fire or other disturbance. Companies therefore need monitoring and a way to address losses when the stored carbon does not remain in place.

Traceability is another practical test. The reporting company needs enough information to connect the removal to the land, supplier or storage site behind it. That becomes difficult in long commodity chains where data has traditionally stopped at a trader or first-tier supplier.

These safeguards make the standard relevant to buyers of carbon removal credits, but the two systems should not be confused. The LSR Standard governs annual entity-level greenhouse gas inventories. It does not certify a project, issue a credit or verify that a unit is suitable for a public offsetting claim.

The unresolved forestry boundary

Forestry is the largest conspicuous gap. GHG Protocol removed forest carbon accounting from this version after technical work exposed unresolved questions about boundaries, baselines and how companies should attribute changes in forest carbon stocks.

Version 1.1 can still cover agricultural land, land-use change connected to covered activities and products derived from biological material. It does not provide the final corporate accounting method for forestry and non-productive land uses. Companies with timber, pulp, paper or forest-heavy supply chains should not assume that the agricultural rules settle their accounting problem.

GHG Protocol has opened a request for information on forest carbon accounting until 1 February 2027. The next framework may arrive through a separate standard or guidance route. Until then, companies need to disclose the method they use and avoid presenting an unresolved forest estimate as if it were fully aligned with the new standard.

What companies should do during 2026

The first preparation task is a boundary screen. A company should identify where agricultural production, land management, land-use change, biogenic products or removals appear in Scope 1 and Scope 3. That screen determines whether the standard is mandatory for its inventory and which suppliers or business units need attention first.

Next comes the data map. Location and activity data will often matter more than spend. Companies may need farm or plot identifiers, land-use history, production data, management practices, carbon-stock measurements, custody records and evidence about how long stored carbon is expected to remain in place. Existing Scope 3 supplier data requests may not collect any of that.

The third task is to decide whether removals will be reported. Including them can provide a fuller account of agricultural management or durable storage, but it also creates monitoring, lifecycle and reversal obligations. The choice should be made before the reporting year rather than after a favourable estimate appears.

Finally, companies should test how the new figures flow into targets, disclosures and assurance. A land-sector inventory may inform a Science Based Targets initiative pathway or a sustainability report, but alignment with one system does not automatically satisfy another. The accounting method, target boundary and public claim still need to be reconciled.

How it differs from carbon farming certification

The timing overlaps with new European Union rules for carbon farming, which can make the two developments look interchangeable. They are not.

The European Union's Carbon Removals and Carbon Farming framework sets certification rules for activities and units. GHG Protocol tells a company how to account for relevant emissions and qualifying removals in its own inventory. A farm could follow an approved certification methodology without every corporate buyer being able to use the resulting unit in the same way. Equally, an inventory removal may meet GHG Protocol requirements without becoming a tradable credit.

Our guide to European Union carbon farming certification follows the project and certification side. The LSR Standard sits on the corporate accounting side. Keeping those purposes separate is essential when a company moves from measuring a removal to financing it, reporting it and making a claim about it.

The first real test comes in 2028

The standard is now published and the accompanying guidance includes worked examples, equations and ten case studies. That gives preparers a route into the detail, but it does not yet show how consistently companies will apply the rules.

The first substantial evidence should arrive in 2028, when calendar-year reporters publish inventories covering 2027. Those reports will show whether companies can trace land emissions through complex supply chains, keep gross emissions and removals visible, and explain gaps without turning uncertainty into false precision.

The standard gives land and removals a firmer place in corporate carbon accounting. Its credibility will depend on whether the resulting inventories reveal what happened on the ground, not merely whether another number appears in the climate report.

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Official sources

• GHG Protocol: Land Sector and Removals Standard and supporting materials
• GHG Protocol: Land Sector and Removals Guidance
• GHG Protocol: what companies need to know about the standard
• GHG Protocol: Land Sector and Removals Standard frequently asked questions
• Feature image: Rice fields Aerial by Wann Majaw, Wikimedia Commons, CC0