Flight Shame & Train Brag: How does Japan measure up on emissions?

Flygskam – this Swedish word, meaning “flight shame,” travelled all over Europe a few years ago to encourage people to stop flying to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. It consequently spurred the use of another Swedish phrase, tågskryt, or “train brag,” to encourage train travel, which has lower emissions. Japan’s thorough and modern rail system is often praised by travelers, but how does it measure up against flying? Let’s take a look.

Carbon footprint of the aviation sector

Aviation accounts for 2.5% of global carbon dioxide emissions, according to Our World in Data. It’s not a lot in terms of overall impact, but it reflects the inequality of GHG emissions. Only about 20% of the world’s population flies. The vast majority of people in the world will never be able to afford to fly. A study has shown that of the high CO2 emissions of the top 1% of EU households (based on consumer expenditure), a very large 41% comes from air transport.

Individuals’ carbon footprints from aviation

Only a minority of the global population fly, but how bad is the individual impact of flying? Let’s see how it compares with other transportation alternatives.

The most carbon-emitting travel is flights of less than 1000 kilometers (based on a domestic flight within the UK), which create 255 grams of CO2 equivalent per passenger kilometer, according to Our World in Data. For reference, to achieve the target of limiting global heating to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels, the average annual carbon footprint per person needs to be kept below 2.3 tons. Based on the calculation for long-haul flights, when you fly direct, one-way, in economy class from Paris to Tokyo, a distance of 9,706 kilometers, you emit 1.5 tons of CO2 equivalent, which puts you well over the annual carbon limit by the time you return home. (This study explains how aviation’s GHG emissions compare to CO2.)

Ghost flights highlight industry’s failings on emissions

The COVID-19 pandemic drastically reduced demand for flying. It also highlighted the industry practice of “ghost flights,” which are flights that carry less than 10% of their passenger capacity.

In 2021, Greenpeace estimated 100,000 ghost flights were happening annually in Europe alone. They exist because of stupid regulation that requires airlines to conduct a certain proportion of their planned flights in order to keep their slots at high-traffic airports. In 2020, Japan’s Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism implemented a special policy to accept exceptions to that regulation if a company had to cancel flights due to COVID circumstances, for example.

Japan Airlines recommends train travel

Japan Airlines and All Nippon Airways hold a duopoly of Japan’s domestic airline market share with a joint market share calculated at 78% in 2016. Both are indicating that they are considering the environmental impact of their industry and the alternatives available.

An article on JAL’s website explicitly says, “Airplanes produce the highest level of carbon emissions, and thus should be avoided when possible. For domestic travel in Japan, travel via shinkansen [bullet train] rather than by plane.” When I read this, I was shocked that an aircraft company was sharing negative information about flying.

Meanwhile, ANA has begun offering a travel service that doesn’t involve physically visiting places, in its new project  Avatar-In. It allows you to visit different places in the world virtually by using a remotely controlled robot. The service suggests that ANA foresees a future in which flying is not a popular option for travel.

Can Japan really brag about its train services?

For many visitors to Japan, riding the bullet train is a highlight of their trip. Environmentally, too, train travel produces much lower emissions per kilometer than air travel. The carbon footprint of European international rail travel, for example, is only 6 g per kilometer, which is roughly 40 times less than the carbon footprint of a short-distance flight. An online Japanese transportation route navigation guide, Navitime, has its own carbon footprint reference for different transportation options. According to Navitime, the carbon footprint for flight is 96 g per kilometer, and for train is 20g/km.

So, if I flew south from Tokyo’s Narita Airport to Kitakyushu (875 kilometers), the carbon footprint per passenger would be 84 kilograms, whereas if I took the train instead, since it covers a distance of roughly 1,080 km, the carbon emissions would be only about 22 kilograms.

It would appear to be a simple choice. However, the current system in Japan is not friendly to train users. While you can easily find a flight from Tokyo to Kitakyushu that costs less than 10,000 yen, travelling the same route by bullet train normally costs more than double that. And the bullet train takes three times longer than a flight. So, it is not hard to see why people choose to fly rather than take the train.

But I hope the train will be the future of travel. Due to COVID, lots of people now have more flexibility and options to work remotely thanks to technological development. Now is the time to use technology to live how we want. For example, we can use it to have fewer in-person meetings and reduce unnecessary flights.

Also, a train journey offers some advantages that flying can’t. For example, you can enjoy beautiful scenery, including mountains, oceans, and thousands of rice fields, or the transition of scenery from one region to another.

In this modern world, we focus too much on how fast we can get to a destination and tend to forget to enjoy the journey. There is no doubt that we may face some inconvenience in life by ditching the plane, but in exchange, we can enjoy a longer planet life, less stress without the security checks required at airports, and beautiful scenery from a train window. Now, that’s something to brag about.