The New Energy Economy: Freight Decarbonization Needs Demand, Not Just Molecules
Freight transport underpins global trade and economic growth. But whether goods move by road, sea or air, these sectors face some of the hardest decarbonization challenges.
Global transport faces two critical imperatives at once, keep trade moving efficiently, while cutting greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions at pace. Freight emissions are projected to rise sharply, and lower-carbon fuel supplies are not scaling or distributing fast enough to meet demand where and when it is needed. Even during periods of disruption, mechanisms that can flexibly connect demand with available lower-carbon solutions remain critical.
Many shippers, logistics service providers and cargo owners want to act on their decarbonization ambitions, but cannot reliably access lower-carbon fuels on the routes they use, and need confidence that any emissions claim is credible, auditable and recognized. This is the challenge a mechanism known as book and claim seeks to address. It allows lower-carbon fuels to be used by those who have access, while verified environmental attributes are transparently allocated to customers elsewhere in the value chain.
Progress depends on ensuring that, ultimately, use of lower-carbon fuels leads to real displacement of higher-carbon alternatives somewhere in the system.
As pressure mounts on global supply chains to cut GHG emissions, the transport sector needs lower-carbon solutions that offer a way forward for operators of all sizes.
Against this backdrop, a mechanism known as book and claim is gaining traction. It offers a way to accelerate the use of lower-carbon fuels in all transport modes across complex, multi-modal logistics, without waiting for physical infrastructure to catch up.
Book and claim is now being applied in real-world freight and logistics operations, supported by fuel suppliers, carriers, cargo owners, logistics providers and independent standards bodies. Proponents argue that it offers a credible, scalable way to connect demand for lower-carbon transport with supply, at a time when progress on reducing carbon emissions is lagging.
“If investments in lower-carbon fuels are tied only to a specific trip where emissions occur, the system becomes fragmented and inefficient,” says Christoph Wolff, CEO of Smart Freight Centre, a non-profit organization dedicated to decarbonizing the freight sector. “Book and claim can support the low-carbon market through bankable long-term offtake agreements for new supply.”
The ISO describes book and claim as a chain-of-custody model in which the administrative record flow is not necessarily connected to the flow of physical material or product through the supply chain. In terms of lower-carbon fuels, book and claim allows the environmental attributes of these fuels to be allocated across a value chain, even when the fuel itself is used elsewhere in the system.
Additionally, book and claim registries enable greater transparency by creating a traceable record of how GHG emissions data is allocated.
“Book and claim is an important mechanism to reduce emissions across the supply chain,” says Bettina Paschke, Vice President of ESG Accounting, Reporting and Controlling at DHL Express. “It’s a mechanism that allows companies to access the emission-reduction benefits of lower-carbon fuels, even if they don’t have a direct physical connection to where that fuel is used.”
That distinction is especially important in logistics, where cargo owners, freight forwarders and carriers are often far removed from where fuel is produced or used.
Transparency is critical to enable companies to identify and mitigate the full environmental impact of their activities, including Scope 3 emissions arising from services performed on their behalf.
“Since many companies subcontract, especially in logistics services, Scope 3 emissions are a large and difficult part of the footprint for many companies to reduce,” says Paschke.
By mid-2025, around half a million customers were using DHL’s GoGreen Plus book and claim service, according to Paschke. Launched in 2023, the solution now applies emission reductions to a “double-digit” percentage of shipments moving through the network. “That has grown significantly over the last three years,” says Paschke.
While book and claim has attracted the most attention in aviation, its advocates stress that the approach is inherently multimodal.
“The principles of book and claim are common across aviation, marine and road freight, even if the implementation looks different in each sector,” says Simon Denn, Vice President of Carbon Strategy at Shell.
Maritime container transport is a concentrated sector with relatively few major carriers. Even so, adoption of book and claim has been slow, as its effective implementation depends on collaboration across the entire freight transport system.
Road transport presents a different challenge: The sector is fragmented, with millions of small operators and limited standardization. Organizations that support book and claim are bringing together the transport sector to structure effective decarbonization solutions. Alongside this is the testing of digital registries and accounting frameworks that can work in practice and at scale.
For DHL, the attraction lies in being able to offer lower-emission transport services across all major modes of transport, rather than only on selected routes where fuel happens to be available.
“Without book and claim, we could only offer lower-emission services selectively,” Paschke says. “This allows us to scale globally, across aviation, marine and road, and make it accessible to a much broader customer base.”
A central argument for book and claim is that it helps unlock investment by aggregating demand for lower-carbon fuels, rather than assessing individual customers’ willingness to pay on a case-by-case basis.
“What matters is growing demand and linking it credibly to supply,” says Denn. “If producers see reliable, aggregated demand coming through, it helps inform investment decisions, enabling capital to flow and production to scale.”
Policy signals are often insufficient to stimulate investment in lower-carbon fuels. Within book and claim, sufficient customer demand is also crucial—there is just more flexibility as to which customers and where they are located.
Investment in lower-carbon fuels is strongest when clear policy support is matched by demonstrable customer demand. Book and claim converts voluntary participation into a credible, sustained demand signal—giving producers the confidence that policy alone cannot provide.
According to the International Energy Agency, biofuel and sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) supplies remain far below what would be required for net-zero pathways by 2050 in transport, particularly in aviation and shipping.
Supporters are clear that book and claim must be underpinned by robust, auditable systems. Concerns about erroneous double counting and greenwashing make integrity a central focus of current efforts.
To address those risks, companies are increasingly relying on digital registries, some built on blockchain technology, to record the lifecycle attributes of lower-carbon fuels and ensure that they are only claimed once.
A broader challenge is to ensure that book and claim systems have well-functioning certification of environmental attributes, data accuracy and governance. The voluntary nature of book and claim means that much of this is driven by initiatives such as the Book and Claim Community to develop principles and best practices.
Industry efforts are being made to harmonize terminology and accounting rules to prevent fragmentation that could undermine confidence. “Harmonization is critical,” says Wolff. “If every mode, region or registry uses different rules, credibility suffers.”
“The Greenhouse Gas Protocol or the Science-Based Targets Initiative had concerns about greenwashing, and these systems are getting a lot more mature,” adds Wolff. “So there are now very concrete steps being taken for book and claim systems to become officially recognized.
Importantly, book and claim is currently used within voluntary frameworks, rather than as a regulatory compliance tool.
“This is about accelerating uptake now,” says Denn. “Transport is a slow-to-decarbonize sector. Book and claim is a flexible bridge that can operate while physical supply chains catch up.”
Book and claim does not eliminate the complexity of transport decarbonization, but its advocates argue that it serves as a practical market mechanism, one that enables better alignment between fuel production and actual demand, ensuring progress even as physical infrastructure development struggles to keep pace.
Disclaimer: In 2025, 80.85% of Shell’s global investments included oil & gas, 9.58% included low-carbon energy solutions and 9.58% non-energy products. Shell’s target is to become a net-zero emissions (NZE) energy business by 2050.
The companies in which Shell plc directly and indirectly owns investments are separate legal entities. In this publication “Shell” is sometimes used for convenience where references are made to Shell plc and its subsidiaries in general.
Disclaimers, including NZE target: shell.com/disclaimer
When we refer to ‘low‑carbon fuels’, we mean fuels that demonstrate a lower lifecycle greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions intensity compared to their fossil‑fuel‑based equivalent.
Depending on jurisdiction and local laws, Shell may offer the sale of Environmental Attributes (for which subject to applicable law and consultation with own advisors, buyers might be able to use such Environmental Attributes for their own emission reduction purposes) and/or Environmental Attribute Information (pursuant to which buyers are helping subsidize the use of lower-carbon fuels but no emission reduction claims may be made by buyers for their own emissions reduction purposes). Different offerings have different forms of contracts, and no assumptions should be made about a particular offering without reading the specific contractual language applicable to such offering.
