Dr. Gary Lanigan:

Under the old EU 2030 target, one was allowed to offset a certain percentage of the national emissions via sequestration. However, that is being revised because there will now be a LULUCF target in itself under the Fit for 55 and the new 2030 LULUCF regulations that are coming in. That limit will essentially be removed.

However, we count LULUCF now on what is called a net-net basis, so it is done relative to a baseline. For example, I could say the baseline for grassland emissions is 7 million tonnes and the next year it is doing 6.8 million tonnes, it counts as a net gain of 200,000 tonnes. That is relative to a baseline. However, we are now moving to what is called gross-net accounting, where we account for all the emissions. That is why our LULUCF sector is going from being a sink under the net-net basis to being a source. We are now counting all the emissions and sequestration.