GHG Protocol: Land Sector and Removals Standard for the Food Industry

Recently, the Greenhouse Gas Protocol has released new standards on the calculation of greenhouse gases linked to the land sector ("Land Sector and Removals Standard Version 1.0 Agriculture and CO2 removal technologies"). What does this standard mean, though?

Previous GHG Protocol guidance focused on the methodology for quantifying fossil-based emissions in a company's supply chain. This meant climate change emissions (like those from carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide) that were released primarily due to the burning of fossil fuels.

However, new guidance was released to allow for more instructions on how to calculate the OTHER kind of emission sources that can also contribute to climate change. There are other emissions?

Yes - climate change emissions are not just from burning fossil fuels, but also from other things related to how humans interact with and manage the land. The newest guidance provided insight into how these other emissions can be broken down, and also how carbon removals can be calculated.

Other emissions are primarily related to the land sector - which includes industries such as agriculture, food and beverage companies, forestry and paper, and companies linked with bioenergy and biofuels. Given that Niatsu's customers are primarily food manufacturers, their supply chain can heavily influence emissions in the land sector.

What do these kind of emissions entail? The newest guidance has broken them down into 5 main sources:

1. Emissions due to land use change.
2. Emissions due to land use and leakage
3. Land management net biogenic CO2 emissions
4. Land management production emissions
5. Biogenic product and Technological Carbon Dioxide Removal (TCDR)-based product emissions

And 4 different ways to report carbon dioxide removals:

1. CO2 removal accounting
2. Land management CO2 removals
3. CO2 removals and CO2 capture with geologic storage
4. Product carbon storage

Let's focus on the different sources of emissions, and how these may be linked with the production of different food items:

Emissions due to land use change:

These kind of emissions occur when a piece of land changes its function. As an example, if land that was previously forested is converted to land for crop production, the trees removed (previously acting as carbon storage), release carbon, thus producing emissions. Similarly, carbon is stored in the soil as well, and any disturbances to this soil are also linked with climate change emissions. On the reverse side, crop land converting to forest may act as a means of removing CO2 from the atmosphere.

Emissions due to land use and leakage:

In this calculation, companies must report the total land occupied (in hectares) in their supply chain. Carbon leakage is more difficult to quantify. This is relevant in the case of companies that are not producing food or animal feed. These companies must report (in CO2eq) how many emissions might be occurring because of displaced land use due to their product. This is particularly relevant for biofuels - how much additional land was needed to grow the food equivalent of the biofuel raw material being produced.

Land Management Net Biogenic Emissions:

Over time, the carbon stock in agriculture soil can decrease (or increase) due to land management practices. Some examples which may cause decreases in the carbon stock would be tillage, overgrazing from animals, and biomass loss. This change in stock over time counts as land management net CO2 emissions.

Land management production emissions: Land management can be responsible for a whole host of emission sources. Some land management techniques include biomass burning, which leads to nitrous oxide and methane emissions. In the case of farm animals, methane from manure and enteric emissions from livestock are both major sources of biogenic emissions. The use of fertilizer, liming, and urea have fossil based emissions due to their production, but also off-gas nitrous oxide, leading to additional climate change emissions after their production.

Biogenic product and TCDR product emissions: These are less relevant to the food industry, but rather industries involved in the use of biogenic products (like bio-based plastics) or bioenergy (corn grown for ethanol).

In the end, there are a lot of different ways that the food product supply chain can contribute to greenhouse gas emissions, and methodologies of calculating these emissions are still evolving. Niatsu currently offers climate change emissions broken down into three categories: emissions due to fossil fuel use, emissions due to biogenic carbon, and emissions due to land use change. With these new standards, we working to update our own methodology and accounting to incorporate the more refined details associated with the land sector!