The Future of E-Commerce on a Scorching Day: What Shopify Sees Beyond Carbon Offsetting

On July 20, 2026, central Tokyo recorded its first "extreme heat day" of the year—a day when the temperature tops 35°C. Statistically the heat arrived right on schedule with the end of the rainy season, but combined with news of record heat waves across Europe and North America, many of us felt a familiar dread: here comes another long, punishing summer.

When you feel the heat intensifying year after year, climate change stops being something happening in a distant country. It becomes a reality sitting right next to our daily lives and our businesses.

In an era of rapid digital progress, using the internet itself carries an environmental cost. Generative AI, with its explosive growth in data processing, consumes enormous computing power in data centers; video streaming strains infrastructure with high-definition data traffic.

So what about e-commerce, which we all use every day?

For e-commerce, the biggest environmental burden is not server power consumption—it is the physical logistics of delivering ordered products to people's homes (trucking and air freight) and the packaging materials involved. Unlike digital services that live entirely on a screen, e-commerce is deeply tied to real-world CO2 emissions behind its convenience. That is the industry's distinctive challenge.

How do you grow a business while building a sustainable relationship with the planet?

Shopify, one of the world's largest e-commerce platforms, is tackling this question with an approach that goes far beyond the conventional corporate playbook.

From Offsetting as an Indulgence to Building a Market That Grows the Technology

The typical corporate climate measure is to "plant trees to offset emissions." Shopify's Sustainability Fund goes a step further.

What Shopify focuses on is not mere emission reduction but building a market for durable carbon dioxide removal (Durable CDR)—technologies that lock atmospheric CO2 away for 1,000 years or more.

• Direct air capture (DAC): capturing CO2 directly from the atmosphere and mineralizing it deep underground.
• Enhanced rock weathering (ERW): spreading crushed basalt and other minerals on farmland so that rainwater reactions carry carbon into stable storage in the deep ocean.
• Biochar and underground injection: converting waste wood and organic waste through pyrolysis, fixing the carbon into soil or deep geological layers.

These frontier technologies are extremely expensive to develop, and startups face a "valley of death" before they can become viable businesses. By signing purchase agreements early—at price points nobody else will pay—Shopify acts as a catalyst that helps climate tech companies commercialize.

Shopify's procurement contracts with climate tech companies now total more than $100 million. In 2022 it also co-founded Frontier, an advance market commitment for carbon removal, together with Stripe, Alphabet, Meta and others. Just last month (June 2026), an additional $915 million in funding was announced, bringing Frontier's cumulative commitment to $1.8 billion. Deliveries of carbon removal through Frontier are on pace to double for the second consecutive year. Shopify is quite literally buying the future of these emerging technologies into existence.

From as Little as ¥81 per Order: An App Ecosystem That Lets Anyone Join Climate Action

What makes Shopify's approach especially compelling is how it draws in the millions of merchants—and their customers—who use the platform.

The flagship example is "Shopify Planet," Shopify's official app.

When a merchant installs the app, every purchase triggers an automatic back-end calculation of shipping emissions based on delivery distance and package weight. Carbon removal credits are then purchased automatically—starting from as little as ¥81 (equivalent to about USD 0.50) per order—making the delivery effectively carbon neutral. The contribution amount is also configurable: you can set it to, say, ¥100 per order.

Each order is a small contribution, but the aggregate is already substantial. In 2024, some 24 million shipments were made carbon neutral through Planet, with more than 15,000 tonnes of CO2 emissions addressed through carbon removal.

And Shopify's appeal does not stop at official tools. The App Store offers strong third-party climate action tools, letting merchants pick the solution that best fits their marketing strategy.

A leading example is "EcoCart," which combines CO2 offsetting at checkout with shipping protection (damage and loss coverage), cashback features, and a real-time counter showing the CO2 impact avoided. By making the contribution visible, it earns customer empathy and doubles as a branding tool that lifts conversion rates (CVR) and loyalty.

Why does this kind of "systemization" matter? Because there is a wide gap between consumer intention and action. In surveys of Japanese consumers, roughly 60% say they want to choose products with a lower environmental footprint, but only about 30% actually do. Other research finds that more than 40% of consumers feel "eco-fatigue" even as awareness of the SDGs spreads. What people want is not ideology but a tangible sense that their actions contribute to solving concrete problems. An app ecosystem that requires no extra effort to join and visualizes the impact on the spot closes the intention–action gap from the systems side.

Ordinarily, investing in cutting-edge carbon removal technology or climate projects would require enormous capital and legal work. With these apps, even a small independent shop can join world-class climate action in one click—and shoppers get to experience the story that buying from this store directly supports the planet's future.

The Reality Behind the Ideal—and a Refusal to Go Quiet

Shopify's climate strategy may look flawless at first glance, but the road has been anything but smooth.

In 2024, Running Tide—a climate tech company known for ocean-based carbon fixation, backed by Shopify and Microsoft—abruptly ceased operations after running out of funding. Even with world-class buyers behind you, turning early-stage technology into reliable operations with a stable supply chain is brutally hard. The collapse made that plain.

The numbers tell the same story. Shopify has contracted roughly 190,000 tonnes of carbon removal in total, but only about 16,000 tonnes—less than 10%—had actually been delivered by the end of 2024. However much money you put down, it takes a long time for these technologies to run reliably at commercial scale. That is where the carbon removal market stands today.

Decarbonizing delivery itself is another big wall. Efforts are under way to switch long-haul air freight to lower-impact sustainable aviation fuel (SAF), but global supply shortages and unfinished international accounting rules are challenges no single company can solve.

What stands out about Shopify, though, is its stance: do not go silent just because you are not perfect.

Rather than falling into "greenhushing"—staying quiet until everything is flawless—Shopify openly discloses risks of failure and delivery delays in its annual reports (the delivery figures above come from the company's own disclosures). It actively participates in writing the rules and protocols of the emerging carbon removal market. Avoiding greenwashing while continuing to take transparent risks: that is Shopify's real strength.

A Perspective the Next Era of E-Commerce Will Demand

Every extreme heat day makes us think about the sustainability of business and the planet.

Shopify's message is clear: environmental action is not a cost or an obligation—it is an investment in creating tomorrow's markets. Growing a business through technology while propagating social value through an open platform ecosystem is a model every digital business can learn from.

Nor is this a distant story for e-commerce businesses in Japan. The domestic ethical consumption market is already estimated at around ¥8 trillion, and a brand's stance on sustainability is becoming a factor in how customers choose where to buy. If you run a Shopify store, apps like Planet and EcoCart can be installed in a few clicks—you can take the first step toward becoming a store that participates in climate action starting tomorrow.

One telling detail: when consumers who already practice environmentally conscious behavior were asked why, the most common answer was that they had personally felt the climate changing. This moment—when we can all feel the brutal heat on our skin—may be the best possible time, for sellers and buyers alike, to think about the choices that shape our future.

References

• 2024 Climate Report (Shopify)
• Shopify committed more to climate technologies in 2024 than ever before (Shopify)
• Planet ― Carbon-neutral shipping (Shopify App Store)
• Frontier Raises Over $900 Million for Carbon Removal Investments (ESG Today)
• Sustainable Purchasing Behavior Survey 2025 (Hakuhodo, in Japanese)
• Consumer Survey on Realizing a Sustainable Society (BCG, in Japanese)

This column is based on publicly available information as of July 2026. Planet's pricing and the programs and surveys mentioned here may change.