WHAT began as a push for shipping emissions transparency more than two decades ago has steadily evolved into one of the most meaningful platforms in the journey towards shipping sustainability. Today, carbon emissions data is not just informing how companies report to stakeholders, it is beginning to shape how they operate. At the heart of this steady, deliberate progress has been one initiative quietly laying the foundation for change: the Clean Cargo Working Group (CCWG).
Launched in 2003, CCWG was the first serious attempt to bring together carriers, shippers and freight forwarders around a shared methodology and dataset for emissions transparency. At the time, shipping’s carbon footprint was largely invisible to its customers.
CCWG changed that, publishing the first tradelane-average emissions factors, expressed in grams of CO₂ per TEU-kilometre. The group created the beginnings of emissions transparency that has continued to evolve in line with growing market demand from shippers and forwarders for deeper insights into the true state of Scope 3 logistics emissions.
By the early 2010s, CCWG had grown into a strong consortium of shipping lines covering more than 60% of global container capacity. The data sets expanded to include thousands of vessels, verified by independent third parties and aligned with frameworks like the Greenhouse Gas Protocol.
Shippers could now report and act on emissions data with greater confidence—using verified figures to inform procurement and target-setting.
This wasn’t just good optics; it marked the beginning of credible carbon data from the container shipping sector. Carriers, too, could demonstrate performance improvements backed by verification rather than marketing.
By the mid-2010s, CCWG tradelane emissions factors had become the de facto global benchmark.
The group’s groundwork and methodology laid the foundation for the Global Logistics Emissions Council (GLEC) Framework, established in 2014, and later incorporated into ISO 14083 (2023), cementing its role as the backbone of logistics carbon accounting.
In short: if you wanted to measure the carbon footprint of a container moving across the ocean, you used CCWG methodology.
Now: Granularity improvements
Fast forward to today. CCWG, which is now part of the Smart Freight Centre, a Netherlands-based NGO leading global transport decarbonisation, is moving well beyond tradelane averages.
Over the years, its data granularity has evolved from broad, network-wide estimates to service, carrier, and now port-pair-level precision. The latest approach aggregates data at the port-pair level, combining AIS vessel tracking, verified fuel consumption, and actual load factors to deliver route-specific emissions insights.
Instead of a single ‘Asia–Europe’ figure, shippers can now view emissions for specific routes such as Shanghai–Rotterdam or Los Angeles–Busan, built on primary operational data.
This shift reflects a broader transformation across logistics: emissions data is becoming operational rather than statistical. It is no longer about reporting last year’s footprint, it is about integrating emissions management into day-to-day logistics decisions.
The future is already visible. Shipment-level data, directly tied to vessel, voyage, and load has to be the next gate post. The technology exists the real question is whether carriers are ready to share it.
If they do, it will unlock a new era where shippers can make routing, booking, and modal decisions based on verified, near-real-time emissions data. That would transform carbon from a compliance exercise into a true operational metric, embedded within logistics execution.
In a sector often described as slow to change, CCWG shows what steady, collaborative progress can achieve. From its early beginnings in 2003 to today’s data-driven sophistication, it has built the foundation for credible, comparable carbon information across global shipping.
The wind is unmistakably blowing toward continued advancement. The next phase will call on supply chain teams to strengthen their carbon literacy, embedding emissions awareness into everyday logistics practice, treating carbon data not as an annual reporting formality, but as a core element of commercial and operational decision-making.
This growing base of high-quality data is what will enable shipper-led decarbonisation across the sector, through better network optimisation, smarter procurement choices, and the expansion of carbon insetting initiatives that can finally operate on precise, verified data rather than broad estimates.
The tools exist, the data are improving, and expectations are rising. The next wave of progress will belong to those ready to use them.