About ZEMBA

Early Work
ZEMBA was incubated and co-founded at the Aspen Institute through the efforts of the Aspen Institute and its staff.  Starting in 2020, the Aspen Institute Energy & Environment Program worked with a number of partners to catalyze private sector leadership and drive policy change to with the goal of enabling the creation of a robust clean energy-powered maritime sector by 2050 at the latest.

Aspen convened early conversations with stakeholders across the maritime shipping value chain to understand the fundamental barriers to adoption of scalable, economically viable fuels and technologies. It quickly became clear that there was a need and opportunity to engage the shipping industry’s customers, in particular corporate freight buyers, to support a new market and accelerate the pace of the maritime sectors’ transition away from high emission fuels. 

Evolution of coZEV
With this focus, Aspen worked in collaboration with and solicited input from a network of freight buyer companies to develop coZEV, Cargo Owners for Zero Emission Vessels, a platform for customers of the shipping industry to come together to undertake high impact initiatives that accelerate the maritime shipping sector’s clean energy transition. Their first action in this space was the coZEV 2040 Ambition Statement, which was the first ever collective signal of cargo owner support for transitioning to a 1.5C aligned maritime sector, specifically stating that signatory companies intend to only use clean energy-powered ocean transport services by 2040. The statement also included the first call for policy action by a group of freight buyers, acknowledging that decarbonization of this sector requires strong public and private sector action at multiple levels. 

Launch of ZEMBA
Building on the successful initial engagement with freight buyers via coZEV, and looking to successful efforts in other sectors that have used precompetitive collaboration and demand aggregation to drive innovation, the Aspen Institute alongside co-founders Amazon, Patagonia, and Tchibo launched ZEMBA in March 2023. Its inaugural tender was launched in September 2023 with over 20 initial members and was successfully completed in April 2024 with the award of 17 multi-year bilateral contracts to the winning shipping line. 

A Successful Pioneering E-fuel Procurement  
In order to enable deep maritime decarbonization and achievement of a net zero sector in the decades ahead, ZEMBA turned its attention in a second procurement to catalyzing commercial deployment of vastly scalable, near-zero emission fuel alternatives, with a special focus on those that could achieve economies of scale and a pathway to economically viable full decarbonization.  E-fuels made from renewable energy (combined in some cases with waste carbon) can meet this strategic need, even as the initial price point remains high until scale can be achieved. By pooling constrained demand across multiple freight buyers, a new competitive market can emerge.  To this end, ZEMBA launched an historic e-fuel tender in 2025 and announced two winning carrier who will deploy e-methanol and e-ammonia in 2027-2031 with the support of over 20 ZEMBA member companies and counting.

A New Home at GMA 
The Center for Green Market Activation, which had served as a technical advisor to ZEMBA since its inception, became the new home for the initiative on September 1, 2026. Joining the GMA family of initiatives created new opportunities for shared learning, common infrastructure, and collaboration across a growing portfolio of buyers alliances.