DHL Global Forwarding, GoodShipping expand partnership to accelerate sustainable shipping

Photo: DHL Global Forwarding

DHL Global Forwarding, the air- and ocean-freight specialist of Deutsche Post DHL Group, and GoodShipping, the global pioneer and market leader in insetting to decarbonize the container shipping industry by changing the marine-fuel mix, are further expanding their longstanding partnership, DHL Global Forwarding announced Nov. 2.

With the latest purchase of approximately 60 million liters (nearly 16 million gallons) of sustainable marine fuel, DHL will reduce a total of 180,000 metric tons of CO2 equivalent on both full-container load (FCL) and less-than-full container load (LCL) shipping until 2024.

This commitment is equivalent to the amount of marine fuel burned by 10 container vessels on their journey from Asia to Europe.

DHL Global Forwarding has been working with GoodShipping for five years, sharing the same aspiration for greener ocean freight via insetting.

“In 2017, we were the first logistics company to work with GoodShipping,” said Tim Scharwath, CEO of DHL Global Forwarding. “An important lever in reducing our CO2 emissions is the use of sustainable fuel and GoodShipping’s insetting service complements us perfectly in this regard. They have a thorough and controlled process, meet our high sustainability standards, and they share the same goal of making logistics emission free. We are very proud to now continue and further enhance this cooperation.”

As part of their joint industry impact, DHL Global Forwarding and GoodShipping also aim to pilot a new insetting-accounting framework of the Smart Freight Centre.

The new framework transfers the approach of allocating emission reductions from sustainable fuels to specific customers by decoupling the accounting of the fuels’ environmental attributes from their physical flow to a general industry standard. In that way, customers can contribute to and report on emission reductions in their transport value chain even if the reduction is not physically linked to their specific transport activity.

“DHL Global Forwarding really steps up as a frontrunner in the freight-forwarding industry with this commitment,” said Dirk Kronemeijer, CEO of GoodShipping. “DHL’s goal to achieve net zero-emission logistics by 2050 made them a perfect partner for a strategic and mutually beneficial long-term collaboration. We can only have the greatest respect for the leadership demonstrated by this huge commitment from DHL, deepening our collaboration even further.”

DHL’s GoGreen Plus service paves the way to transition to clean and sustainable transportation. As part of GoGreen Plus, customers across the different divisions of Deutsche Post DHL Group are offered various solutions for minimizing logistics-related emissions and other environmental impacts along the entire supply chain, such as the use of sustainable fuels. Hereby a calculation is made using internationally agreed standards how much fossil volume the cargo owner would have used without any insetting service. Subsequently, this corresponding volume is replaced by truly sustainable biofuels made out of waste and residues only.

With the book-and-claim mechanism, DHL can pass on the benefits of lower greenhouse-gas emissions (scope 3 emissions) to its customers, helping them achieve their climate targets.

The product offering GoGreen Plus is part of the group’s mid-term sustainability roadmap for 2030 and contributes to the subtarget of having at least 30 percent of fuel requirements covered by sustainable fuels.

To reduce greenhouse-gas emissions in line with the Paris Climate Agreement, the Group will spend 7 billion euros (USD$6.84 billion) in sustainable fuels and technologies by 2030.