Announced on 22 September 2026, the additions take ZEMBA’s membership to
more than 50 companies seeking to accelerate demand for cleaner maritime
transport. The three companies join a
platform that brings freight buyers together to support shipping services
powered by low- and zero-emission fuels. Their participation is intended to
help address Scope 3 emissions, which include indirect emissions associated
with activities across a company’s value chain, including purchased transport
services. Christina Foss, senior
director at DSV, said industry collaboration was necessary to advance the
transition and that membership would enable the logistics company to work with
other buyers on lower-emission ocean freight.
ZEMBA aggregates demand from companies purchasing maritime transport and
conducts competitive tenders for the environmental benefits associated with
cleaner shipping services. By combining
purchasing commitments, the alliance seeks to provide greater commercial
certainty to carriers, shipowners, fuel producers and investors. Its approach
is designed to help bring emerging fuels into commercial use while enabling
participating companies to support emissions reductions beyond what they could
achieve individually. The procurement
model also allows companies to participate without changing their normal
freight purchasing arrangements. Members support the additional cost of cleaner
shipping and receive the associated, verified environmental attributes. In December 2025, ZEMBA selected
Hapag-Lloyd and North Sea Container Line (NCL) as winners of its second tender,
focused on hydrogen-derived marine e-fuels.
Beginning in 2027, Hapag-Lloyd plans to use e-methanol aboard large dual-fuel
containerships on a transoceanic trade lane. The company says the fuel will be
produced using very low-carbon hydrogen from renewable energy and deliver at
least a 90% lifecycle carbon-intensity reduction compared with conventional
high-emission fuel. NCL will deploy an
e-ammonia-powered containership on a northern European trade lane. Together,
the arrangements are expected to deliver at least approximately 120,000 tonnes
of greenhouse gas emissions reductions over a minimum three-year period beginning
in 2027. ZEMBA uses a book-and-claim
mechanism to allocate the environmental attributes of cleaner shipping to
participating buyers, separately from the physical movement of their cargo. This enables companies to support
alternative-fuel deployment even when their own consignments do not travel
aboard vessels using those fuels.
For its second tender, ZEMBA is working with Katalist, a non-profit
maritime book-and-claim system hosted by the Mærsk Mc-Kinney Møller Center for
Zero Carbon Shipping and RMI. The system supports transparent tracking,
verification and appropriate allocation of emissions reductions.
ZEMBA’s inaugural tender, awarded to Hapag-Lloyd in April 2024, covered
waste-based biomethane shipping services for 2025–2026. Seventeen companies committed to purchasing
environmental attributes associated with more than one billion twenty-foot
equivalent unit nautical miles of shipping between Singapore and Rotterdam. The
arrangement was expected to avoid at least 82,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide
equivalent emissions over two years.
The alliance’s expansion also follows an organisational change. In
September 2026, after three years of incubation at the Aspen Institute, ZEMBA
became a programme of the Center for Green Market Activation. The move brings
its maritime procurement activities into a broader portfolio supporting demand
for lower-carbon products and transport services.