JR Tokai and JR West will start a service in April that makes CO2 emissions from travel on the Tokaido and Sanyo Shinkansen virtually zero. The service is available to about 35,000 corporate members of the “Express Reservation” online booking service, starting with a collaboration with the pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca. According to JR Tokai, this is the first service in Japan to make CO2 emissions from Shinkansen travel virtually zero.
The two JR companies will purchase “CO2-free electricity” derived from renewable energy sources such as solar power from electric companies and allocate this electricity to the business travel usage of employees of corporate members of Express Reservation, thereby making CO2 emissions virtually zero. Certificates showing the effect of CO2 reduction will be issued to corporate members who use the service. The additional fee charged to corporate members who use the service is “several tens of yen per one-way trip between Tokyo and Shin-Osaka, and several hundreds of yen between Tokyo and Hakata”.
AstraZeneca has been working on CO2 emission measures since 2019, including reducing the number of business trips, utilizing online meetings, and shifting from air travel to rail travel. In this context, it has been working with the two JR companies to construct this scheme since around August 2023. The CO2 emissions from AstraZeneca employees’ business trips on the Tokaido and Sanyo Shinkansen are about 184 tons per year (as of 2023), with the expectation to reach virtually zero in the fiscal year 2024.
Makoto Akiyama, Group Leader of JR Tokai’s Sales Division, said, “We hope that more companies, including those who have been reluctant to travel due to concerns about CO2 emissions and those interested in preserving the global environment, will use this service.”
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