The Shipping Industry is Shifting Away from High-Emission Fuels.
Today, the maritime shipping sector is responsible for transporting 80 to 90 percent of goods around the world. As the global economy shifts to cleaner energy sources, the maritime sector is falling behind. Maritime infrastructure needs upgrading, market uncertainty is stifling needed investments, and 99 percent of vessels on the water today operate on high-emission fuels. The maritime sector’s slow transition away from old business models threatens corporate and societal climate goals. Now is the time to be future-proofing this sector, making necessary investments to ensure its continued role as the backbone of our global economy.
The Path to Sustainable Shipping
Shipping has long been considered a hard-to-abate sector. Incremental changes to operations––like slow steaming or optimization software––can reduce costs and emissions in the short term and should be pursued aggressively, but they only get us part of the way there. Future-proofing shipping requires, in part, transitioning away from high-emission bunker fuels to new clean hydrogen-derived fuels, which many experts believe will be the most scalable and cost-effective in the long term. Challenges abound, but ZEMBA is a coalition of companies committing their collective procurement demand to encourage the development and commercial deployment of clean, sustainable maritime shipping services.
What We’ve Learned
Before the official launch of ZEMBA alongside co-founders Amazon, Patagonia, and Tchibo in March 2023, we heard from hundreds of companies struggling to address issues with their maritime value chain. During thousands of discussions with these freight buyer companies, we heard the same thing: Business leaders want to help future-proof their supply chains, increase reliability and transparency of services, and invest in long-term sustainable solutions, to manage their long-term costs and reach their net-zero targets. But it isn’t clear to them how to strategically and practically move forward. Companies need to know:
- What fuel is worth paying more for?
- Can these investments count toward my corporate sustainability goals?
- What role does global policy play in the development of this nascent market?
- How can we ensure we’re getting the best price?
We’ve also gained a better perspective on the sector’s clean energy transition from the rest of the value chain: the ports, carrier lines, fuel providers, and banks responsible for supplying more sustainable shipping services. Investing in the solutions that will be most scalable and cost-effective in the long term can be risky business. Because shipping assets are long-lived (a typical vessel’s lifetime is 30 to 50 years), investments in new fuels, services, and ships are significant and require long-term planning. And there isn’t much wiggle room for failure when 80 to 90 percent of global trade is on the line. Goods need to be moved around the world—predictably, reliably, and consistently.
How ZEMBA Helps
ZEMBA is designed to tackle these hurdles, building markets and facilitating freight buyers’ access to the latest advancements in sustainable shipping, while sending a strong signal to the shipping companies and fuel providers that more sustainable investments will pay off.
As a first-of-its-kind buyers group within the maritime sector, we are laser-focused on accelerating commercial deployment of clean energy-powered shipping, enabling economies of scale, and helping freight buyers maximize emissions reduction potential beyond what any one company could accomplish alone. Principally, ZEMBA aggregates demand from companies willing to pay an early premium for certified, variable, low- and zero-emission shipping. With this demand, we run tenders for the environmental attributes associated with low- and zero-emission shipping services and work to get our members the best price possible. See our 2-minute 101 video that explains the whole process.
Membership includes access to trusted information about the most sustainable fuels and technologies, the flexibility to choose the size and scope of investment that makes sense for them, and a platform to learn from peers and collaborate with suppliers. All these benefits are available with no membership fee thanks to generous philanthropic funding, leaving members more money to spend on achieving their net-zero targets.
If you are interested in learning more about the benefits of your company joining the Zero Emission Maritime Buyers Alliance, reach out at zemba@aspeninstitute.org.
