Dokumentacija o emisiji ugljika za teret prema SAD-u: Zašto vaši kupci počinju tražiti tu dokumentaciju
Something has quietly evolved in the way US importers look at their overseas suppliers. A new question is increasingly surfacing in vendor surveys, sourcing meetings and procurement emails, along with price sheets and product specs: Can you offer carbon emission data for your shipments?
If you are a Chinese exporter, a freight forwarder or someone shipping to the United States, this query may seem out of the blue. It didn’t. It is the downstream result of years of regulatory pressure, investor-driven ESG demands and a fundamental reworking of the way multinational firms account for their supply chain footprints. What used to dwell in the sustainability department of huge organizations has migrated into procurement and the movement is only accelerating.
This essay examines what is really driving customer demand for carbon emission certification on US-bound freight, what paperwork and standards are involved, how the regulatory landscape is shaping up and what Chinese exporters and logistics providers need to do to remain competitive. It is created for practitioners, not academics, and based on actual regulatory timelines and procurement patterns that are impacting the market today.
The Demand Is Real — and It Is Coming from Procurement, Not PR
One way to get a sense of this shift is to look at where the pressure is coming from. For most of the previous decade, corporate sustainability commitments have been mostly voluntary and limited to company websites. Sustainability managers queried about emissions, not supply chain directors. That has been altered.
According to a 2023 McKinsey survey, 73% of B2B buyers now choose providers that can show low-carbon performance. More recently, MIT’s Center for Transportation and Logistics showed that 64% of organizations incorporate sustainability indicators into their supplier scorecards compared with 38% in 2020. These are not trivial changes. They indicate a systemic shift in how procurement teams are evaluated internally – and how they carry that evaluation pressure down to their suppliers.
Two things happening at the same time now make procurement teams care. US companies that have operations or sales in the European Union are being pulled into the EU’s Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD), which calls for detailed reporting of Scope 3 emissions, or indirect emissions that take place throughout a company’s value chain, including in transportation and logistics. For a US importer purchasing goods from China, the ocean freight leg from Shenzhen to Los Angeles is firmly in Scope 3. If a corporation is not able to report it, it cannot comply with CSRD.
On the other hand, California’s Climate Corporate Data Accountability Act (SB 253) would compel corporations doing business in California and generating more than one billion dollars of sales to publish their Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions starting in 2026, while Scope 3 disclosures are due in 2027. Given the scale of the California market and the global reach of corporations doing business there, this state-level rule has in effect become a de facto national standard for large enterprises. “The message to suppliers is simple. If you want to continue shipping to our warehouses, we need your numbers.
Understanding the Regulatory Landscape: What Is Actually Required
Carbon documentation is fraught with regulatory complexity, with multiple overlapping frameworks, varying scopes, timelines, and enforcement procedures. This is a practical guide to the important issues for freight to the US.
The GHG Protocol and Scope 3 Category 4
The GHG Protocol is the global standard for accounting for greenhouse gases for corporations. It splits emissions into three scopes. Scope 1 includes direct emissions from assets held by the company. Scope 2 is purchased electricity. Scope 3 is the most complex and the most significant to supply chains, it is all indirect emissions in the value chain. Specifically, China to US maritime freight and last mile delivery emissions are Scope 3 Category 4 (Upstream Transportation and Distribution). When a buyer requests your emission data, they are usually looking for something they can feed into their Scope 3 Category 4 reporting.
ISO 14083 and the GLEC Framework
ISO 14083 (2023) set an international standard for the calculation and reporting of greenhouse gas emissions from transport chain operations. It offers a harmonized way to calculate the CO2 per ton-kilometer of diverse modes of transport. For exporters and logistics providers, emission calculations based on ISO 14083, or the Global Logistics Emissions Council (GLEC) Framework, are becoming the credibility benchmark. Buyers want numbers with methodology behind them, not generic guesswork.
California SB 253 and the SEC Climate Disclosure Rules
Arguably the most effective single domestic US policy for supplier chain emissions transparency is California’s SB 253. Under a safe harbor clause, large businesses doing business in California must start reporting Scope 1 and Scope 2 by 2026, while Scope 3 disclosures are required by 2027. The US Securities and Exchange Commission has also proposed climate disclosure requirements that would require reporting of major climate risks, adding to pressure from investors as well as regulatory compliance. These frameworks are creating a scenario where the absence of logistical emission data is a commercial risk for US importers – and by extension, for their abroad suppliers.
| Regulation / Framework | Nadležnost | Ključni zahtjev | Relevant Deadline |
| GHG Protocol (Scope 3) | Globalni standard | Report Scope 3 upstream transport emissions | Ongoing / voluntary baseline |
| ISO 14083 | Globalni standard | Standardized freight emission calculation methodology | In effect since 2023 |
| EU CSRD | EU / affects US exporters to EU | Mandatory Scope 3 disclosure for large companies | Large companies: 2024–2025 |
| Kalifornija SB 253 | Kalifornija, Sjedinjene Američke Države | Scope 1 & 2 by 2026; Scope 3 by 2027 | 2026-2027 |
| SEC Climate Disclosure | USA (proposed) | Material climate risk reporting | Evolving / rule under review |
| EU CBAM | EU (indirect US impact) | Embedded emissions declaration for imported goods | Full enforcement 2026 |
What Carbon Emission Documentation Actually Looks Like in Practice
Many exporters find the term “carbon emission documentation” to sound abstract. In practice, it means a certain set of data and reports that a shipper or logistics provider may develop and communicate with their buyers. The most requested documents fall into three categories.
The first is a shipment-level carbon emission report, which measures the amount of CO2 equivalent (CO2e) emitted during the transport of a particular cargo. For ocean freight from China to the US, this means multiplying the weight of the cargo and the distance travelled by an emission factor (usually represented in grams of CO2 per ton-kilometre, or gCO2/ton-km). Standard Ocean freight container from Shenzhen to Los Angeles is about 11,000 to 12,000 nautical miles. For a 10-ton consignment, a carrier emitting 15-20 gCO2/ton-km would emit between 3.3 to 4.4 metric tons of CO2 on that leg alone. The last-mile delivery leg — often by truck from the port to the final destination — contributes additional emissions and makes up as much as 40% of the total logistics-related CO2, some analyses show.
The second is a Carbon Intensity Indicator (CII) rating on the carrier level. The International Maritime Organization (IMO) has established the CII system which grades ocean ships from A to E for their CO2 emissions per cargo mile. If a ship has a D rating for three years in a row, or an E rating in one year, remedial action is required. CII rating of the vessel carrying their cargo is increasingly viewed by shippers as a proxy for the emission quality of their maritime freight. The inquiry concerning the CII rating of the vessel used is a valid one asked by a buyer that any respectable freight supplier should be able to answer.
The third category is the yearly logistics emissions summary, which is a summary of all emission data at the shipment level for a reporting period. This feeds into a company’s Scope 3 yearly disclosure. This is the data buyers who file CSRD reports or prepare for California SB 253 compliance need in an auditable and verifiable format.” One statistic alone, without methodology documentation, is not enough – buyers need to understand how the numbers have been derived, what criteria have been implemented and whether a third party has examined the methodology.
The Ocean Shipping Reality: Why Emissions Vary More Than Most Shippers Realize
A poorly known area of freight carbon reporting relates to how much emissions might differ according on routing, vessel, carrier and even the geopolitical situation on trade routes. Global maritime container transportation hit a record high in carbon emissions in 2024, partly due to ships rerouting around the Cape of Good Hope after the escalation of conflict in the Red Sea. Transport work – the amount of cargo in tonnes multiplied by nautical miles sailed – jumped 18% in 2024 from a year earlier, according to data released by Xeneta and Marine Benchmark, boosting emissions accordingly.
This background is important because it illustrates how a shipper that used the same carrier and the same route in 2023 and 2024 may have substantially different emission figures for the two years, without any fault of their own. The sophisticated buyer in this respect will obtain the distinction. But it also highlights the growing importance of a logistics partner who can calculate, explain and document these changes.
According to IMO’s 2023 GHG Strategy, there are intermediate targets of 40% carbon intensity reduction by 2030 with a long term net zero aim by or around 2050. Maritime transport has been included in the EU Emissions Trading System, requiring shipping lines to surrender carbon permits – currently priced at between 80 to 100 euros ($85-$106) per metric ton of CO2 – for a growing share of their emissions. These costs are passed on to shippers in the form of Carbon Adjustment Factors in freight prices. Those carriers with superior CII ratings can charge alternative fee structures, so emission performance is becoming an issue in freight procurement, not only sustainability reporting.
| Način prijevoza | Typical Emission Factor (gCO2/ton-km) | Relative Carbon Intensity | Vrijeme tranzita (Kina do SAD-a) |
| Ocean Freight (Standard) | 10-20 g | Najniža | 25–35 dan |
| Ocean Freight (Rerouted via Cape) | 20-35 g | Low–Medium (route-dependent) | 35–50 dan |
| Rail (China-Europe segment) | 20-40 g | Srednji | 30–45 dan |
| Zračni prijevoz | 500-900 g | Vrlo visoko | 3–7 dan |
| Last-Mile Truck (Domestic US) | 80-150 g | High per km | 1–5 dan |
How Chinese Exporters and Freight Forwarders Should Respond
The practical question for any Chinese exporter or logistics provider working the US market is: what do you really do about this? The solution is a combination of data infrastructure, documentation competence and the suitable logistical partner.
The first step is to evaluate what your existing freight forwarder can really deliver. Most forwarders do not currently have emission reports compatible with ISO 14083 in their normal service portfolio. If you can’t give shipment-level CO2 statistics with a clear methodology statement, it’s a gap that will increasingly show up as your customers start putting emission evidence in their procurement requirements. The moment to plug the gap is before it becomes a condition of the contract by the buyer.
The second phase is to establish internal awareness of what purchasers are asking for. The asks are generally not for perfection, they are for solid, methodology-backed figures that can be audited. A well-documented computation based on reported emission factors is significantly more beneficial than no data. If your logistics partner can provide a per-shipment CO2e number based on a known technique and include that with your regular shipping documentation, you are ahead of most competitors on this issue.
Third is how the operation is to be conducted. Ocean freight is by far the lowest-carbon transoceanic transport option from China to the US, with emission factors around 25 to 50 times lower than air freight on a per-ton-kilometer basis. This is a huge consideration for any shipper seeking to balance cost and carbon footprint. “The biggest impact in terms of carbon intensity of freight is ocean versus air. It’s also the choice that most directly impacts what appears in a buyer’s Scope 3 Category 4 report.
How Topway Shipping Supports Carbon-Conscious US-Bound Freight
Founded in 2010 and based in Shenzhen, China, Topway Shipping is a leading provider of cross-border e-commerce logistics solutions for Chinese exporters shipping to Europe and the United States. The founding team has more than 15 years of practical experience in international logistics and customs clearance, especially in China-US trade corridors.
Topway’s service model covers the whole logistics chain – from first-leg pickup and consolidation to ocean freight, international skladištenje, customs clearance and last mile delivery. This end-to-end visibility is directly important to carbon documentation: because Topway owns the whole journey of the shipment (not passing responsibility at intermediate points), it can give consolidated emission data across all legs of the journey, not just one part.
The company provides both full-container-load (FCL) and less-than-container-load (LCL) ocean freight from China to major US ports, offering exporters the flexibility of how they ship while still benefiting from the carbon efficiencies of ocean freight. For large or heavy cargo – a niche market where Topway has created significant infrastructure — ocean freight is sometimes the only real choice for delivering things up to 8 metric tons in one piece, or with dimensions in excess of 8 meters on one side. These are exactly the areas where the complexity of documentation is greatest and where having a freight partner that understands physical logistics as well as reporting requirements provides the most value.
As buyer expectations around emission documentation continue to evolve, Topway Shipping’s commitment in full-chain visibility and traceable, technology-enabled operations provides the framework for the kind of shipment-level data that procurement teams are beginning to want. The difference between winning and losing contracts for Chinese exporters trying to be ahead of the curve is increasingly whether they collaborate with a logistics provider that makes transparency a primary service feature – not an afterthought.
What Buyers Are Actually Going to Ask For — and When
Drawing on existing legislative timescales and procurement trends, here’s a realistic look at what buyer requests for carbon emission paperwork will look like over the next few years.
The most prevalent requests in 2025 and into 2026 will be for annual logistics emissions summaries and shipment level CO2 data to populate Scope 3 Category 4 declarations. Primarily from large firms with EU exposure or operations in California. Requests will often be via supplier questionnaires on platforms like CDP Supply Chain or EcoVadis and will initially take spend-based estimates supported by carrier-specific data if available.
The bar will be up in 2027 and 2028. Companies covered by California SB 253’s Scope 3 disclosure deadline will need auditable, methodology-backed data at the product or shipping level. The EU CSRD’s extension to non-EU enterprises and the downstream cascade across international supply chains mean that even mid-sized Chinese exporters supplying large European or US retailers will be subject to similar requirements. Now is the time to construct the data infrastructure, not two years from now.
CO2 AI and BSR study on procurement trends indicates that beyond 2028, the need will extend deeper down supply chains, with more coverage of tier-2 suppliers. Existing clean emission reporting companies will be positioned as preferred strategic partners and not replaceable vendors. That difference drives contract terms, pricing pressure and business continuity.
| Timeline | What Buyers Will Likely Request | Who Is Most Affected |
| 2025-2026 | Annual Scope 3 Category 4 summaries; shipment-level CO2e data; carrier CII ratings | Large US importers with EU exposure or California operations |
| 2027-2028 | Auditable, ISO 14083-aligned shipment reports; product-level carbon footprint data | Mid-to-large enterprises under SB 253 or CSRD downstream cascade |
| 2028-2030 | Tier-2 supplier coverage; emissions verification by third parties; SBTi-aligned supplier targets | Broader supply chain; including mid-sized exporters and forwarders |
Zaključak
It’s no longer a niche sustainability concern to document carbon emissions from freight destined for the US. This is a procurement reality that is working its way through the large business supply chains and will trickle down to mid-tier vendors in the next two to three years. Regulatory factors such as California SB 253, CSRD, SEC climate disclosure and IMO shipping targets are colliding with commercial pressure from purchasers requiring credible and auditable data to populate their Scope 3 reports.
Chinese exporters and freight forwarders have a window of opportunity to prepare, but it’s not open-ended. Data infrastructure firms that chose logistics partners able to produce ISO-aligned emissions documentation, and respond proactively to customer needs, would find themselves in a better commercial position. If you wait until the query is a contractual necessity, the procedure will be more disruptive and more expensive.
The transition to carbon-transparent supply chains is inexorable. Capital markets, legislation and the growing pressure of transnational procurement systems drive it. “In order to stay competitive in the U.S. market, it is critical for companies to know what buyers are asking for, why they are asking for it and how to respond with credible data.”
Pitanja i odgovori
Q: Do US customs currently require carbon emission documentation for imported goods?
A: No. US Customs and Border Protection does not currently require the reporting of carbon emissions as part of the import approval procedure. The documentation requirements mentioned in this article are from the procurement policies of the buyer’s side and the state/international regulations that apply to importers themselves, not the customs process. But that could alter as US federal guidelines on climate disclosure evolve.
P: Koja je razlika između emisija Scope 1, Scope 2 i Scope 3?
A: Scope 1 includes emissions from assets that a corporation owns or controls, including emissions from a company-owned truck fleet. Scope 2 is indirect emissions from purchased energy, like the power in a warehouse. Scope 3 covers all additional indirect emissions via the value chain and includes the freight a company employs to transport goods. Most importers will have Scope 3 Category 4 (Upstream Transportation and Distribution) for ocean freight from China to the US.
Q: How is the CO2 emission from an ocean freight shipment calculated?
A: This is usually calculated by multiplying the weight of the shipment (in tonnes) by the distance travelled (in kilometres) by the vessel’s emission factor (grams of CO2 per tonne-kilometre). For example, a shipment of 10 tons travelling 18,000 km on a ship with an emission factor of 15 gCO2/ton-km would emit around 2.7 metric tons of CO2. The actual number depends on vessel type, load factor and itinerary. This is carried out in a systematic, auditable way according to the methodology requirements provided by ISO 14083 and the GLEC Framework.
Q: What is a CII rating and does it affect my freight?
A: The Carbon Intensity Indicator (CII) is a grading scheme developed by the IMO, which rates ocean vessels on a scale from A (best) to E (worst) according to their CO2 emissions per unit of transport effort. Ships with a D rating for three years or an E rating for one year require obligatory corrective action plans that affect their operational availability. For shippers, the use of boats with higher CII ratings generally leads in lower emission factors for their shipments, which is relevant for Scope 3 reporting. Many buyers are already starting to ask about the CII ratings of ships employed in their suppliers’ logistical operations.
Q: How can Topway Shipping help with carbon emission documentation?
A: Topway Shipping handles the entire logistical chain from China to the US, covering pickup, ocean freight, foreign warehousing, customs processing, and last-mile delivery. This end-to-end view allows emissions to be tracked combined over all transport legs. For exporters who are beginning to see customer demands for carbon data, it’s a major operational advantage to be working with a logistics partner that runs openly across the complete chain – and can support documentation needs as reporting standards grow.
