Google, Microsoft and DSV Join ZEMBA to Advance Low-Emission Ocean Freight

Google, Microsoft and logistics provider DSV have joined the Zero Emission Maritime Buyers Alliance (ZEMBA), expanding a collective purchasing initiative aimed at reducing shipping emissions across global supply chains.

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.

How does ZEMBA support cleaner shipping?

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.

Which fuels will the next tender deploy?

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.

How are emissions reductions allocated?

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.

What did the first procurement achieve?

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.