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.
Most businesses that decide to act on their net-zero targets reach the same point of friction. Buying carbon credits has meant tracking down brokers, sitting through sales calls, and requesting a quote just to learn a price, sometimes with limited proof of what you are buying.
The earnings calls that quietly reframed climate from sustainability question to operating risk.
Three earnings calls in the last 18 months tell the story without any help from a press release.
Hershey, May 2024: cocoa price exposure compresses margin, and the company attributes part of the cost shock to West African weather. Olam, July 2024: coffee climate exposure quantified in the annual report. JBS, January 2025: supply chain climate disclosures expanded materially in response to investor pressure and regulatory expectation. None of these companies issued the announcement as climate news. They issued it as financial news. The climate-linked supply chain risk did not arrive with a sustainability framing; it arrived as a P&L line.
You are probably reading this article because you suspect the same thing is happening to your business. This piece walks through what is showing up on which earnings calls, how procurement and finance leaders are quantifying the exposure, and what serious corporates are doing about it before the regulator asks.
Where climate risk has already appeared in earnings
The pattern is consistent across resource-intensive sectors. A weather event compresses supply, the price spikes, the cost flows through the income statement, and the analyst on the call asks whether the event is anomalous or structural. Increasingly, the honest answer is the second one.
Cocoa is the cleanest example. The 2023 to 2024 West African harvest fell sharply on the back of erratic rainfall and disease. Cocoa futures more than tripled. Companies with concentrated West African sourcing absorbed the cost; companies with diversified sourcing absorbed less. The exposure was not climate as ESG topic. It was climate as cost of goods.
Coffee follows the same pattern. Brazilian and Vietnamese harvests have moved on weather more sharply across the last several seasons. Roasters with long-tenor supplier relationships and origin diversification have managed the volatility; roasters with spot-market exposure have not. Wheat, sugar, palm oil, beef: the same dynamic in different commodities, a pattern the IPCC AR6 Working Group II report projects will intensify across agricultural systems through mid-century.
What this means: climate risk is no longer a footnote in the 10-K. It is a line item the CFO has to explain on the call.
The three commodity exposures that hit margin first
For most companies with material Scope 3 exposure, three exposures dominate the near-term P&L risk.
- Concentrated single-origin sourcing in a climate-vulnerable region. If your tier-one supply for any material commodity sits in one geography, you have a concentration risk that climate amplifies. Diversification across origins is the obvious hedge, but it takes years to build and requires relationships you cannot acquire by tender.
- Supplier financial fragility under climate stress. Smallholder farmers, who supply a large share of the global cocoa, coffee, and palm oil market, do not carry the balance sheets to absorb yield shocks. When yields collapse, they exit. When they exit, your supply base shrinks, and the surviving suppliers raise prices. The risk is structural, not cyclical.
- Logistics and storage exposure to extreme weather. Hurricane disruptions to Gulf shipping, drought-driven Panama Canal restrictions, flooding in European inland waterways: each of these has moved input costs in the last three years, a pattern documented in Munich Re’s natural catastrophe data. The exposure shows up as a one-quarter event in the financial press but accumulates over time on the cost line.
TCFD and ISSB disclosure changes
The disclosure architecture has now caught up with the risk. The Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures, whose recommendations are now embedded in the ISSB’s IFRS S2 climate standard, requires companies to disclose climate-related risks across physical and transition categories, with quantification where possible.
For physical risk specifically (the climate-linked supply chain risk you are reading about), the disclosure must address both acute exposures (extreme weather events) and chronic exposures (gradual changes in temperature, precipitation, and growing seasons). The disclosure must address the time horizon over which the risk is material, the parts of the value chain exposed, and the financial impact under different scenarios.
The CSRD imposes similar requirements under European law, with double materiality (both financial and impact materiality) embedded in the assessment. The practical effect: your auditors and your investor relations team now need a defensible answer to the climate-linked supply chain risk question, and the answer needs to be quantified.
What procurement and finance can do now
Three actions matter near-term.
Map your exposure. Most companies do not have a clear view of which tier-one and tier-two suppliers sit in which climate-vulnerable geographies. Without the map, you cannot quantify the risk, and without the quantification, you cannot disclose it credibly. The map is the foundation, and World Resources Institute climate risk research provides useful public tooling to start.
Diversify and deepen, in that order. Diversification across origins reduces concentration risk, but the deeper move is to invest in the resilience of the suppliers you already have. Regenerative practices, agroforestry, soil health interventions: these reduce yield volatility under climate stress and protect your input cost trajectory.
Embed the climate spend inside procurement, not outside it. Treating climate risk as a sustainability cost line subordinates it to the ESG budget. Treating it as a procurement and resilience investment puts it in the budget that matters, which is the cost-of-goods budget that the CFO defends quarterly.
Nature-based supply chain investments are the asset class designed for exactly this purpose. They sit inside the value chain, they reduce climate-linked supply risk, they generate verifiable Scope 3 reductions, and they produce the documentation an auditor and a regulator can both test.
If you are quantifying climate-linked supply chain risk in advance of the next earnings cycle or the next disclosure period, the carbon and sustainability experts at Carbon Credit Capital can help you map your exposure and structure a Dual-Value Model response that addresses reduction, resilience, and disclosure-readiness in a single program. Schedule a consultation.
More and more small and medium-sized businesses are hearing the same question from their larger customers: What is your carbon footprint? That question now travels down entire supply chains, and it arrives next to tender requirements, certification criteria, and rising customer expectations.
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