LSRS Frequently Asked Questions

Q: What is LSRS?

The Land Sector Removals Standard (LSRS) is a final standard from the GHG Protocol that defines how companies should account for land-based emissions and removals in their greenhouse gas inventories.

LSRS replaces the draft Land Sector and Removals Guidance (LSRG), significantly shortening and clarifying the framework while raising the bar for integrity in removals accounting.

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Q: When does LSRS take effect?

LSRS is effective January 1, 2027.

While the standard itself is final, critical implementation guidance is still forthcoming and expected in Q2 2026. This includes additional guidance on soil sampling, uncertainty calculations, allocation approaches, and monitoring protocols.

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Q: Is LSRS mandatory?

LSRS is voluntary, but in practice it is becoming the expected framework for companies with science-based climate commitments.

Companies aligned with Science Based Targets initiative will need LSRS-aligned, GHG Protocol-compliant reporting to support board-level net-zero and Scope 3 commitments.

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Q: Why does LSRS matter for food and agriculture companies?

Agriculture emissions behave differently from fossil emissions. They are biological, variable, and reversible.

LSRS provides a framework to:

• Determine the necessary accounting categories for land based emissions and removals
• Clarify traceability requirements for making various claims
• Separate land emissions from removals
• Reduce double counting across supply chains
• Improve credibility of regenerative agriculture claims
• Align climate reporting with long-term program design

The shift is from estimating impact to managing outcomes over time, and it’s essential for companies in the food and agriculture space working towards scope 3 emissions targets.

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Q: What are “removals” under LSRS?

Removals are increases in stored carbon (e.g., soil or biomass) resulting from land management. This is an important part of LSRS because it gives companies clear frameworks for reporting removals.

Under LSRS, companies may only report removals when they meet all of the following:

• Traceability to the land where removals occur
• Primary and empirical data supporting carbon stock change
• Quantified uncertainty
• Ongoing monitoring to detect reversals and ensure carbon remains stored

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Q: Do removals require direct soil sampling?

This is currently one of the biggest open questions in LSRS.

LSRS states that companies “should obtain measurements or calibrate models” in the first year removals are reported. Some interpretations suggest this implies direct soil sampling, while others allow calibrated models using representative datasets.

• Previous third-party reviews accepted calibrated model approaches
• Recent interpretations suggest soil sampling may be required
• Final clarity is expected in the Q2 2026 guidance

Regrow is actively engaging with SustainCERT and the GHG Protocol to clarify acceptable pathways.

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Q: Does LSRS require field-level traceability everywhere?

No, but traceability determines what can be reported.

Companies can report at the level of traceability they have:

• Field / land management unit
• Harvested area
• Sourcing region (with traceability to first point of aggregation and mass balance)
• Jurisdiction (emissions only)

Removals require traceability to at least the field, harvested area, or sourcing region level.

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Q: What is “impact traceability” or intervention accounting?

For projects without sufficient physical traceability, LSRS allows companies to report outcomes using intervention accounting in a separate ledger.

This pathway enables:

• Early-stage or landscape programs
• Practice-based impact evaluation
• Transition programs building toward inventory readiness

However, it is still unclear whether & how SBTi will accept intervention-accounted outcomes toward climate targets. Companies should treat this as a transitional, not final, reporting pathway.

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Q: What is a supply shed approach, and why does LSRS support it?

A supply shed approach accounts for emissions and removals across a defined sourcing region rather than at the level of individual farms. LSRS supports this approach because it can reflect how agricultural supply chains function in practice and can enable scale when strong accounting safeguards are in place.

LSRS allows supply shed reporting when:

• Physical traceability exists to the first point of aggregation within the sourcing region
• Systems are in place to prevent double counting (through traceability or conservative allocation methods)
• Allocation methods are applied consistently and transparently

In theory, this enables companies to scale climate programs without contracting every individual farm. In practice, however, pure mass-balance systems are rarely feasible for row cropping systems due to early physical blending, non-binary outcomes, and uncertainty requirements. As a result, LSRS-aligned supply shed approaches for grains typically rely on field-linked data, intervention-based accounting, and conservative allocation, rather than mass balance alone.

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Q: What does LSRS require for permanence?

Companies reporting removals must:

• Monitor carbon storage over time
• Detect and report reversals
• Assume reversals if monitoring stops

LSRS allows companies to manage risk using buffer pools, where a portion of removals is set aside to cover potential future losses.

This turns removals into an ongoing responsibility, not a one-time claim.

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Q: How does LSRS handle uncertainty?

LSRS requires companies to address uncertainty explicitly when reporting removals. This includes quantifying uncertainty where possible, such as through confidence intervals, and documenting all material sources of uncertainty, even if they are not fully quantified.

The standard expects companies to describe sources such as system variability, data sample size, measurement and calibration error, and expert judgment, and to clearly note any uncertainty sources that were excluded from quantitative analysis, along with steps taken to reduce uncertainty over time.

While the final standard uses softer language (“should” rather than “shall”) than earlier drafts, creating some flexibility in how uncertainty is applied in practice, additional guidance on acceptable methods for uncertainty calculation and documentation is expected in Q2 2026.

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Q: How does allocation work under LSRS?

LSRS requires companies to:

• Use one consistent allocation method across emissions and removals
• Apply the same spatial granularity for all metrics

The standard recommends allocating carbon stock changes across entire crop rotations, but how this works alongside annual reporting is still unclear and will be addressed in forthcoming guidance.

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Q: What does LSRS mean for farmers?

LSRS increases the value of:

• Long-term participation in programs
• Consistent land management
• Traceable supply chains

Farmers adopting regenerative practices can generate measurable outcomes, but those outcomes must now be supported by monitoring and data continuity to be recognized in corporate reporting.

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Q: How is Regrow helping customers prepare for LSRS?

Regrow is supporting customers by:

• Providing emissions across required cradle-to-farmgate accounting categories
• Aligning emissions and removals quantification and allocation with LSRS requirements
• Supporting traceability at field and sourcing-region levels
• Managing uncertainty and reporting transparency
• Avoiding double counting
• Rebaselining 
• Building permanence and reversal monitoring solutions
• Helping companies scale programs responsibly while guidance continues to evolve
  
  

We are closely tracking LSRS clarifications and working with customers to design programs that are credible today and resilient to future guidance.

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