Climate Change and Tourism - UNEP - Division of Technology ...

152 Climate Change and Tourism – Responding to Global Challenges
Box 30: East Japan Railway Company 689
The East Japan Railway Company operates over 13,000 rolling stock and 1,700 stations, and
carries 16 million passengers. An annual ‘Sustainability Report’ is produced. The following goals
(established in 1996) were achieved by 2002:
• 20% reduction of CO emissions in general business activities;
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•
80% of railcars are energy-saving cars, which consume about half the electricity of
conventional railcars;
15% reduction in energy consumption for train operations in proportion to unit transportation
volume;
• 60% reduction of NO emissions at a company-run thermal power plant;
x
• the promotion of environmentally friendly driving practices has lowered the instances of
quick acceleration; this has reduced energy use and also accident rates by 38% over three
years;
•
implementation of specific environmental conservation activities (including tree planting) on
an annual basis;
• the carbon efficiency of JR has improved from 94.5 to 71.5 tonnes of CO per billion yen.
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12.1.3 Modal Shift
As rail and coach transport have lower emissions than air and car transport (see Figure 12.3), a modal
shift from air and car transport to rail and coach will help to reduce tourism transport emissions. Up
to distances of about 1,500 km, rail and coach capture significant shares of the markets and thus are
to some extend alternatives to air transport. The share of rail depends strongly on the rail travel time
excess over the air trip. More than 50% of the rail-air market is captured by rail for times of up to 2.5
hours. If the rail travel time increases to over 5 hours the share reduces to below 10%. 690 High market
shares can be captured by developing high-speed railway networks implying lower travel times. For
instance, in the EU25, about one third of all tourist journeys by air cover less than 1,500 km and
could theoretically be replaced by rail and coach, if high quality infrastructure is offered. This would
correspond to emission reductions (CO 2 ) of about 8% of all EU tourism transport emissions. However, a
modal shift of 100% of all air transport trips below 1,500 km one-way is not very likely to happen. Even
10% will require a strong incentive from the sector. This would just reduce emissions by less than 1%.
A 20% shift from car to rail would result in a reduction in CO 2 emissions of 4–5%. This would require
the entire EU to achieve the performance of the Swiss public transport system. Furthermore this shift has
several other advantages in terms of traffic safety, noise, air quality, space use, congestion and space for
parking at congested destinations.
Another option for short-haul travel is to shift from jet aircraft to turboprop aircraft. Though the variance
between different regional aircraft types is large, it appears that regional turboprops are significantly
(between 10–60%) more fuel efficient than regional jets. 692
UNWTO, 9 July 2008