Mitsui O.S.K. Lines, also known as MOL, one of Japan’s biggest shipping companies, announced its first carbon removal results under its long-term environmental plan. This move marks a real step beyond reducing emissions. MOL aims to reach net-zero greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 2050 under its Environmental Vision 2.2.
Shipping emissions are hard to cut, so removal methods help tackle the remaining CO₂. MOL’s actions also reflect the global growth of the carbon removal market. Companies and countries are investing more in solutions that take CO₂ out of the air for long-term storage. This trend is rising as climate targets push industries to go beyond emission cuts.
DAC, Ocean Capture & Rocks: A Trio of MOL’s First Carbon Removal
In fiscal 2024, MOL announced its first verified carbon removal achievements. This progress builds on its Environmental Vision 2.2 strategy. The shipping giant secured measurable removal commitments using several technologies.
In its LinkedIn post, the company notes:
“In FY2024, MOL reported credits equivalent to 2,000 tons of CO₂ emissions- marking the company’s first tangible achievement in CDR… As MOL continues to diversify its CDR portfolio, it remains committed to finding and scaling the most effective solutions- both natural and technological- to advance toward a decarbonized future.”
MOL partnered with Climeworks, a leading Direct Air Capture (DAC) company. Through this partnership, the company agreed to procure 13,400 tonnes of CO₂ removal by 2030 using Climeworks’ DAC systems.
- MOL is the first shipping company globally to set up this type of DAC purchase. DAC pulls CO₂ directly from the air and stores it permanently.
MOL also signed an offtake agreement for 30,000 tonnes of carbon removal credits from Captura’s Direct Ocean Capture technology. This method removes CO₂ from seawater, which draws CO₂ from the air over time.
In addition, MOL made a deal with Alt Carbon for 10,000 tonnes of carbon removal credits. These credits come from enhanced rock weathering in India. Enhanced weathering helps pull CO₂ from the air into minerals in soil, a type of removal considered higher quality and more durable. This deal is the first of its kind between a Japanese shipping company and an Indian climate tech firm.
MOL is also buying enhanced rock weathering removal credits through another multiyear offtake. This brings added diversity to its removal portfolio. These deals help the company support different removal paths rather than relying on a single method.
- SEE MORE: MOL Becomes the First Japanese Shipping Firm to Retire Tech-Based CDR Credits Through NextGen
Why Shipping Needs Removals
The global shipping industry carries about 90% of traded goods by volume. It also produces roughly 3% of global CO₂ emissions. If trade grows, emissions could rise unless action is taken.
The International Maritime Organization (IMO) aims for shipping emissions to drop. The targets are: 20-30% reduction by 2030, 70-80% by 2040, and net-zero by 2050, all compared to 2008 levels.
Even with cleaner fuels like ammonia or hydrogen, some emissions will remain hard to avoid. Energy efficiency and fuel switches help, but they cannot remove all CO₂ from long ocean voyages. Carbon removal fills this gap. It helps shipping companies offset their leftover emissions while future fuel solutions scale up.
MOL’s Environmental Vision 2.2 plan aims to remove 2.2 million tonnes of CO₂ by 2030. This goal covers all its removal initiatives. This creates demand for early‑stage removal solutions and helps scale emerging technologies.
Partnerships on the Horizon: Forests, Carbon Credits, and Cross-Industry Moves
MOL’s carbon removal work includes broader moves with partners and industry players. The company is supporting carbon credits to cut emissions and expand negative emissions. All credits are third-party certified and independently verified to ensure quality and impact.
In January 2025, MOL and Marubeni Corporation started Marubeni MOL Forests Co. This joint venture will create, trade, and retire nature‑based carbon credits. Its first project aims to plant around 10,000 hectares of new forest in India. This will generate credits from afforestation and reforestation. These forests will start producing removals around 2028. Nature‑based solutions help store carbon while boosting biodiversity and soil quality.
Also, MOL signed a deal with ITOCHU Corporation. This agreement aims to promote environmental attribute certificates. These certificates help cut Scope 3 emissions in transportation. This work is the first Japanese model linking shipping and aviation in environmental certificate use. Scope 3 emissions come from supply chains and end‑use.
Another related program is the NX‑GREEN Ocean Program by Nippon Express, launched in February 2025. It uses carbon inset certificates tied to low‑carbon shipping by MOL vessels. These certificates help companies reduce their Scope 3 freight emissions. The program shows how removal and decarbonization can work together for supply chains.
Together, these partnerships show MOL’s expanding role. The company is connecting technical and natural removal solutions with marine decarbonization and cross‑industry climate efforts.
Riding the Carbon Market Wave
The global carbon removal market is growing fast. Corporations and governments are investing more in long-lasting removal methods. These include DAC, ocean capture, enhanced weathering, and nature-based solutions. This growth matches scientific calls for big removals to keep warming under 1.5°C.
MOL is helping to expand the removal market by investing in multiple technologies. A joint venture for a NextGen CDR Facility, including MOL and other buyers, aims for over 1 million tonnes of certified removals by 2025. These projects include DAC and biomass removal with long-term storage. Early demand helps drive down costs over time and encourages more technological development.
Shipping companies are also investing in emission reduction technologies. These include more efficient ship designs, alternative fuels, and onboard carbon capture systems.
Global shipping firms continue to align with the IMO’s decarbonization goals through technology upgrades, fuel changes, and climate partnerships. This includes work on hull design, logistics efficiency, and fuel alternatives such as ammonia and hydrogen. Those efforts reduce emissions intensity and support long-term climate targets.
Challenges Ahead: Cost, Permanence, and MRV
Despite progress, carbon removal faces challenges.
- High Costs and Early Stage Technology: Direct Air Capture and ocean capture remain expensive and are still early in deployment, making them less appealing than traditional emission reductions.
- Need for Strong MRV and Certification: Measurement, Reporting, and Verification systems must stay robust to ensure credits reflect real and lasting CO₂ removal. Independent certification is critical for market trust.
- Nature-Based Risks: Forest and land projects require careful planning. Carbon storage can be reversed if forests burn, degrade, or are mismanaged. High-quality MRV standards help protect long-term carbon value.
Sailing Toward 2050: MOL’s Vision for Net-Zero Maritime
Despite challenges, experts say removals will be necessary for sectors that cannot eliminate emissions by 2050. Shipping, aviation, and heavy industry will likely cut emissions and use durable removals to meet climate goals.
For MOL, investing in removal markets, partnerships, and strong MRV frameworks positions the company as a leader in maritime decarbonization. The first results under Environmental Vision 2.2 show how shipping firms can add new climate solutions to their sustainability plans.
By partnering with DAC, ocean capture, and enhanced weathering technologies, and by investing in nature-based solutions, MOL is expanding its climate action beyond traditional emission cuts.
As shipping and corporate climate planning evolve, carbon removal will remain a key part of long-term strategies. MOL’s progress with Environmental Vision 2.2 shows how companies can blend technology, nature, and market forces to achieve bold climate goals.
- READ MORE: Maritime Decarbonization: Japanese Shipping Giant NYK Partners with 1PointFive for DAC Credits
The post Japan’s Mitsui O.S.K. Lines, MOL, Unveils First Carbon Removal Results Sailing Toward Net Zero appeared first on Carbon Credits.
The accounting differences that decide whether your nature investment shows up in inventory, in BVCM, or nowhere at all.
The question reaches a procurement team about three weeks before the next sustainability committee meeting. Someone has read about insetting. Someone else has just signed off on an offset purchase. The CSO wants to know if the two are interchangeable. The answer is no, and the GHG Protocol Land Sector and Removals Standard is the reason why.
This article walks through what each term means at audit-grade specificity, what the standards actually say about how each gets counted, and how to decide which tool fits which target. The insetting vs offsetting question is one of the most-searched in corporate climate strategy, and one of the most poorly answered. By the end of this piece, you should be able to brief a committee on the difference without notes.
The two definitions, in plain English
Offsetting means buying carbon credits generated outside your value chain and retiring them against your residual emissions. The reduction happens somewhere else, financed by you, and the credit is the receipt.
Insetting means investing in emission reductions or removals inside your own value chain, typically with suppliers, where the reduction is directly linked to the products and services you buy. The reduction happens inside the boundary of your Scope 3 inventory, and the accounting treatment is fundamentally different.
The shorthand from the University of Oxford’s Nature-based Insetting Initiative is useful: insetting is what you do with the supply chain you have; offsetting is what you do with the supply chain you do not have.
What the GHG Protocol Land Sector Standard actually says
The GHG Protocol Land Sector and Removals Standard, finalised in 2024 after a multi-year pilot, sets the rules for how land-based emission reductions and removals enter corporate inventories. The Standard distinguishes between inventory accounting (Scope 1, 2, and 3) and project or intervention accounting (a separate methodology for crediting).
For insetting, the practical implication is that supplier-level interventions, when properly measured and attributed, can reduce your Scope 3 category 1 (purchased goods and services) emissions in your inventory. The reduction is not a credit retired against the inventory; it is a lower inventory number, period.
For offsetting, the credit is retired separately. It can be reported as a contribution toward a net-zero claim under the SBTi Beyond Value Chain Mitigation framework or as part of a VCMI Carbon Integrity claim, but it does not lower the inventory number.
A practical consequence: if your Science Based Target requires a 50% absolute reduction in Scope 3 emissions by 2030, insetting moves you toward the target. Offsetting does not. This single point of difference reshapes the procurement decision.
When insetting counts toward Scope 3 (and when it does not)
Insetting counts toward Scope 3 only when several conditions are met:
- The intervention must occur with an entity in your value chain.
- The emissions reduction or removal must be measured against a defensible baseline.
- The reduction must be attributed to your share of that supplier’s output, not double-counted with other buyers.
- It must follow the inventory accounting rules in the GHG Protocol Land Sector Standard, not the project accounting rules used to generate credits.
The most common failure mode is double counting. If your supplier sells the same reduction as a credit on the voluntary market and also reports it to you as a Scope 3 reduction, the math breaks. The Standard requires you to address this risk, typically by purchasing and retiring the supplier-issued credit as part of your inventory or by contractual provisions that prevent the supplier from selling the reduction twice.
When insetting does not count toward Scope 3: when the intervention sits with a supplier you do not buy from, when the baseline is not defensible, when the attribution is unclear, or when the documentation does not survive audit. Those cases default to Beyond Value Chain Mitigation, which is still useful but operates on a different ledger.
The procurement and supplier engagement question
Insetting is harder than offsetting. That is the unfashionable truth most buyers eventually confront. Offsetting is a transaction; insetting is a relationship.
To run an insetting program, you need supplier mapping precise enough to know which farms or facilities sit at which Scope 3 boundary. You need an engagement model that gets suppliers to participate, which usually requires multi-year commitments and shared economics. You need an MRV architecture that measures the right things and produces audit-ready documentation. And you need a contractual structure that prevents double counting and protects both sides.
The trade-off you receive in return is significant. Reductions count against your inventory rather than your residual. Supplier relationships deepen, which protects sourcing continuity. Yield and quality improvements often follow regenerative interventions, which reduces your input cost over time. And the regulatory file, under CSRD, CSDDD, EUDR, and the SBTi FLAG Guidance, is materially stronger.
Choosing the right tool for the right target
A practical decision rule. If your target is a science-based Scope 3 reduction and you operate in a FLAG sector or source FLAG commodities, insetting is the structurally correct tool. If your target is a net-zero claim that includes neutralising hard-to-abate residual emissions outside your value chain, BVCM via high-integrity offsets is the structurally correct tool. Most companies with material Scope 3 exposure need both, in different proportions, sequenced over time.
The sequencing matters. Insetting takes longer to stand up but produces a permanent reduction in the inventory. Offsetting can be transacted faster but does not change the inventory and now sits under tighter claim restrictions. Treat them as complementary tools with different jobs, not as substitutes. The Accountability Framework Initiative and the IUCN Global Standard for Nature-based Solutions both provide useful guardrails for the insetting side, with biodiversity, human rights, and benefit-sharing requirements that go beyond carbon math.
If you are mapping a Scope 3 reduction roadmap and need to scope which interventions count toward your inventory versus which sit in Beyond Value Chain Mitigation, the carbon and sustainability experts at Carbon Credit Capital can help you structure a nature-based supply chain investment program that fits your FLAG exposure, your target architecture, and your audit horizon. Schedule a consultation.
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