International shipping is increasingly subject to greenhouse gas (GHG) regulation aiming to decarbonize shipping. Recently, besides regulations, voluntary and market-driven emission control measures have been increasingly adopted. Cargo owners as customers of shipping companies have started to introduce emission reduction targets and strategies for the transportation of their raw materials and products. These are part of organisations’ indirect emissions called scope 3 emissions, which large companies are obliged to measure and report publicly. The objective of this study is to investigate how widely cargo owners have set emission targets so far, what their ambition level is and how relevant current targets are to shipping. These questions are studied empirically by surveying 300 cargo owners from Finland. The results indicate that every third Finnish company has already placed overall scope 3 targets and every fifth scope 3 targets to transports. 2030 was found to be an inflection year, when emissions targets were set for many cargo owners. The study suggests that cargo owners expect emission cuts relatively soon and in volumes that often exceed regulations. Findings point to the relevance of cargo owner decarbonization