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The New Rulebook for Land-Sector Carbon Accounting
NORTHAMPTON, MA /ACCESS Newswire/ October 2, 2026 / LSRS at a Glance
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The Land Sector and Removals Standard (LSRS), Version 1.1, takes effect January 1, 2027, and applies to agriculture and carbon dioxide removal technologies – not forestry.
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LSRS standardizes how companies account for land-use change, land management, biogenic products, carbon removals, and reversals.
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For farmers, wider buyer adoption of the LSRS could, over time, translate to greater alignment across buyer programs, but credible claims will depend on better data, traceability, and cross-sector collaboration.
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The Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Protocol, a multi-stakeholder partnership of businesses, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), governments, and others, develops the accounting standards that underpin corporate GHG reporting.
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The LSRS is not an optional program: Companies with significant land-sector activities must apply it to conform with the GHG Protocol’s Corporate Standard and Scope 3 Standard. In addition, the Science Based Targets Initiative (SBTI) requires all companies setting Forest, Land and Agriculture Guidance (FLAG) targets to use the final standard from January 1, 2027.
For years, companies have set climate goals for factories, fleets, and purchased energy using established greenhouse gas accounting conventions. Setting and meeting climate goals for land and soils, however, is a much more complicated prospect. Crops and the soils they depend on are dynamic components of larger agricultural systems and inextricably linked to the natural world. Crops and soils interact with regional weather and broader climatic shifts, and plants absorb carbon as they grow. Likewise, soils can gain or lose carbon as land-use patterns change, and stored carbon can later return to the atmosphere. Added to these complexities is the movement of these crops, often without farm-level traceability, when they’re sold into long, interdependent supply chains.
The LSRS brings all these dynamics into a common corporate accounting framework. Published in 2026 and effective January 1, 2027, the LSRS is the “first GHG Protocol standard to provide greenhouse gas (GHG) accounting requirements and guidance that equip companies with the methods needed to quantify, report, and track land emissions and CO₂ [carbon dioxide] removals.” Forest carbon accounting remains outside its current scope while the GHG Protocol continues separate stakeholder work on that issue.
The standard is not a regenerative agriculture certification, a carbon-credit methodology, nor a list of preferred farm practices. Instead, it’s an accounting and reporting framework for land emissions and carbon dioxide removals. Its coverage extends beyond crops and soils to technological removals, like direct air capture, carbon dioxide capture with geologic storage, and biogenic and technology-based removal products. LSRS gives companies a consistent way to define inventory boundaries, identify relevant emissions and removals, evaluate data, and report results across operations and value chains.
