Shipping Coalition of Leading Brands Sets Tender for E-Fuel Deployment
ZEMBA, a buying collation for sustainable shipping for major consumer brands, released details on its second-ever tender which will require e-fuels for primary propulsion. The effort works by consolidating shipping volumes from the nearly 40 current members including Ikea, Amazon, and other well-known brands to drive the development of green fuels.
The next tender will launch in January 2025 with ZEMA reporting it aims to aggregate at least 80 billion tonne nautical miles of demand for the emissions abatement associated with e-fuel-powered container shipping. They report that this equates to 1.4 million twenty-foot containers transported across the Pacific Ocean by e-fuels, assuming a benchmark distance of Shanghai to Los Angeles. Through this tender, ZEMBA expects to enable its member companies to abate nearly 470,000 metric tonnes of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.
It plans to award three-to-five-year contracts for e-fuel powered container shipping starting in 2027. The requirement will be for e-fuels that achieve at least 90 percent emission reduction for primary propulsion. Bidding is open to individual container carriers or consortiums, with ZEMBA reporting it is open to the possibility of multiple winners.
“ZEMBA is making history by voluntarily catalyzing commercial e-fuel deployment through our next collective tender,” said Ingrid Irigoyen, President and CEO of ZEMBA. “Our members are demonstrating that freight buyers are willing to make multi-year advanced offtake commitments now to incentivize the creation of new markets for the most scalable solutions, which will be required for them to achieve their 2030 and 2040 climate goals. By creating economies of scale and targeting investment in the right long-term solutions, our members can also accelerate the pace and manage overall costs of this clean energy transition.”
In addition to original members, ZEMA reports it has added new members such as AIT Worldwide, dsm-firmenich, Frog Bikes, GEPA, Olyra, Pernod Ricard, Poly Medicure, Sanofi, SEKO Logistics, and Vaude.
ZEMBA’s e-fuel focus for the upcoming second tender builds off experience gained during its successful inaugural tender that introduced a new very low-emission fuel alternative to freight buyers in the maritime sector – liquified biomethane from waste. ZEMBA’s inaugural tender was completed in April 2024 with Hapag-Lloyd selected as the winner. It is supporting members to collectively abate at least 82,000 metric tonnes of GHGs in 2025 and 2026.
The design of the second tender is also grounded in the goals and aspirations of ZEMBA member companies and insights gained from a Request for Information conducted earlier this year in collaboration with the Lloyd’s Register Maritime Decarbonisation Hub. The Aspen Institute’s Energy and Environment Program serves as the ZEMBA secretariat.
ZEMBA (The Zero Emission Maritime Buyers Alliance) is a non-profit organization and the first-of-its-kind buyers group within the maritime sector. The aim is to accelerate commercial deployment of zero-emission shipping, enable economies of scale, and help cargo owners maximize emissions reduction potential beyond what any one freight buyer could accomplish alone.