NORDEN has delivered the first verified maritime emissions reductions through the RSB Book & Claim registry, in a pilot completed with Microsoft and the Roundtable on Sustainable Biomaterials (RSB). This marks the first time a maritime carrier has issued and delivered verified emissions reductions through the RSB registry specifically, and Microsoft is the first company globally to use Book & Claim for shipping emissions through it.
What Book & Claim Actually Lets a Buyer Do
Book & Claim allows companies to purchase verified emissions reductions linked to sustainable fuels regardless of where those fuels are physically consumed within the shipping industry. NORDEN's own framing is explicit about what this solves: companies can begin meaningfully reducing and accounting for shipping emissions now, without requiring sustainable fuels to be physically available on their own specific voyages. That decouples a buyer's emissions claim from the physical route their own cargo travels, addressing supply chain emissions that companies often have limited visibility or direct influence over.
Extending an Existing Aviation Framework, Not Building a New One
RSB's Book & Claim registry was already established for aviation before this pilot; NORDEN, Microsoft and RSB have jointly extended that existing framework to maritime transport for the first time, rather than creating a separate registry system from scratch. To enable this specific transaction, NORDEN became the first maritime operator to obtain RSB Book & Claim trader certification, a prerequisite for issuing and selling verified emissions reductions through the registry, developed in close collaboration with RSB as it adapted its aviation-oriented procedures to cover maritime carriers.
Why a Single Pilot Transaction Is Positioned as a Wider Signal
RSB's Director of Digitisation and Book & Claim, Max Eichelbaum, described NORDEN's certification as exactly the kind of collaboration that will open this solution to the wider shipping industry, and RSB has said it will update its Book & Claim Chain of Custody procedure following this pilot specifically to enable broader adoption across maritime more generally. That framing positions this transaction as a template intended to be replicated by other carriers and buyers, rather than a one-off arrangement between NORDEN and Microsoft alone.
How This Differs From Physical Fuel Offtake Deals
Unlike the direct SAF and marine fuel offtake agreements covered elsewhere in this series, where a buyer commits to specific fuel volumes delivered to a specific location, Book & Claim severs that physical link entirely. A buyer such as Microsoft can fund verified emissions reductions from sustainable fuel used anywhere in the maritime industry, while NORDEN, as the certified trader, handles the underlying fuel transaction and issuance of the corresponding credential. This is structurally similar to the aviation SAF book-and-claim mechanisms already referenced in this series' Singapore and China coverage, now applied to maritime for the first time.
What Remains Unconfirmed
Neither NORDEN nor Microsoft disclosed the volume of emissions reductions transacted in this pilot, pricing, or the specific fuel type and vessel involved. NORDEN states it will continue working with customers and partners to scale the solution, with the stated goal of making verified emissions reductions a standard offering in ocean transport, but no timeline for that broader scale-up was given.
Source: NORDEN, 2 September 2026.
