The GHG Protocol’s Land Sector and Removals (LSR) Guidance will define how land sector emissions can be measured and accounted for. It is currently in draft consultation status, with the final version expected to be released in 2024.

The Science Based Targets Initiative (SBTi) FLAG Guidance defines how companies with SBTi targets are required to set FLAG targets. It was released in September 2022.

Latis enables companies to measure FLAG emissions at scale for all of their products and materials. Because the Land Sector and Removals Guidance and SBTi’s FLAG guidance does not require primary data for Land Management or Land Use Change emissions, Latis can provide FLAG-compliant reporting with just ingredient information.

Yes, alcohol is considered part of FLAG as it sources materials from Land, Forest and Agriculture.

Note: If a company is buying alcohol and lacks transparency in the alcohol ingredients and/or inclusion percentages this would be out of scope for Latis.

Land Management and Land Use Change emissions are typically the highest contributors to a product’s carbon footprint. This is why Latis gives you visibility into FLAG emissions at both the material and product-level. By understanding how FLAG emissions contribute to your product carbon footprint, you can explore product innovation opportunities.

Knowing where you source your ingredients (and where the raw commodity was likely grown) is the first step to understanding and managing your emissions at these stages. We suggest you start by identifying products, materials, and vendors with the highest FLAG emissions. This way, you can strategically engage your suppliers to collect primary data for high impact materials. From there, you can use Latis to model reduction scenarios and identify abatement strategies to reduce FLAG emissions.

FLAG emissions only apply to packaging materials that are made from agricultural materials - notably, cardboard or paper products.

Land Use Change will not appear on product reports that were created before the Land Use Change metric was released. You can create a new Product Report to make sure Land Use Change is reflected. Learn more about Product Reports.

A Land Use Change of 0 means that according to our data sources, there is no land conversion associated with the crop in that location. This may happen for a number of reasons.

Products produced in regions with no Land Use Change at a national level will always have a Land Use Change value of 0 (ie. Afghanistan).

Products may be produced in such a small amount that they are not reported at a national level in that region. This makes it impossible to allocate some of the LUC to the crop in question.

Wild harvested ingredients have no associated Land Use Change.

For land use change, you have to look at any land conversion that has happened over the last 20 years. Deforestation is one factor that results in land conversion, and the “deforestation free” commitment generally only captures the past few years.

Therefore, we suggest that customers engage their suppliers to understand any conversion that has occurred on the land that is being used to grow their crops.

According to GHG Protocol Land Sector and Removals Draft Guidance:

CO2 removals occur where CO2 is transferred from the atmosphere to storage within a non-atmospheric carbon pool. A CO2 removal can also be referred to as carbon sequestration or enhanced carbon storage where the carbon is derived from atmospheric CO2.

In accordance with the GHG Protocol’s Land Sector and Removals guidance, accounting for Carbon Removals requires primary data. Unless the required primary data inputs are provided, Carbon Removals by default will be shown as 0 for all products. Read more on how to account for Carbon Removals.

HowGood’s FLAG Annex Report is aligned to the most updated version v1.1., which SBTi launched to replaces the previous version v1. Tables 7 and 8 do not appear in v1, but they are in v1.1.

You can download the latest version of SBTi’s annex v1.1 from here under “Documents to Submit” - FLAG Annex on p3.

We aggregate raw materials such as "corn grain" and "corn flour" into one single commodity - "corn". This is to be expected because SBTi FLAG requires reporting by agricultural commodity.

Let’s say you were buying 100 metric tons of corn grain from France and 100 metric tons of corn flour from France. We would calculate that you were buying 212 metric tons of corn from France. This is to be expected because:

Rainforest Alliance Certification does not impact our assessment of Land Use Change (LUC) emissions. In rigor, according to our research team this is to be expected for 2 reasons:

Similar to the rationale for Rainforest Alliance Certification, RSPO does not impact LUC for a commodity. There are no standards that we are currently aware of that can account for no land conversion over a 20-year period.

Under the tab "Annex Questions" of HowGood's FLAG Annex Report you will find the responses to the questions you will need to input in the SBTi FLAG Annex in the tab "Activities, Data & Targets". All questions are clearly highlighted with the respective bullet point which you can copy and paste into your report.

Under the tab titled "report summary" we provide important information on "data sources, methods and assumptions" that you will need to input in the tab "Add-ons Table 8" in the column with the same name.

Indeed, biogenic emissions are rarely called out in the agricultural LCA literature. When they are mentioned, they are assumed to be 0.

See Chapter 18 of the GHG Protocol’s Draft Land Sector and Removals Guidance. In addition, our model has been third-party certified to be compliant with the GHG Protocol Product Standard and ISO 14067 and this assumption is in line with these standards.

We are always looking to add granularity to our database where the data are available. Biogenic emissions is one area we continue to explore and hope to see more data as a result of changing reporting standards.