Fujitsu and Kawasaki City encourage environmental engagement with app and gamification features to incentivize sustainable behavior

Grassroots trial empowers residents to play role in creating carbon-free future

Fujitsu Limited, Kawasaki City

Tokyo and Kawasaki, November 16, 2023

Fujitsu and Kawasaki City today announced the start of field trials of “Green Carb0n Club,” a smartphone app for users in Japan developed by Fujitsu that aims to raise citizens’ and businesses’ awareness toward environmentally friendly lifestyles. Fujitsu and Kawasaki City will provide trial users in Japan access to a new city building game, “Green Carb0n Farm” ⁽¹⁾ jointly developed by Fujitsu and SEGA XD CO., LTD ⁽²⁾ that links to the environmental app. The trial will also include projects in cooperation with various fan communities to examine ways to encourage and increase environmentally friendly, voluntary actions by citizens and businesses, and how these behaviors impact sustainability. The trials will take place between December 4, 2023 and continue until March 31, 2024.

Image 1: Screenshots of the city building game in Japanese (under development)

Norihiko Fukuda, Mayor of Kawasaki City, comments, “To contribute to the realization of a carbon-neutral society, Kawasaki City is promoting decarbonization initiatives including the “Carbon Zero Action Mizonokuchi” project with various partner organizations. We have already been conducting field trials using the environmental app in the past to encourage citizens and businesses to change their behavior to encourage environmentally friendly lifestyles. We hope that the new trials will further speed up the decarbonization movement in the city. Kawasaki City will celebrate its 100th anniversary in 2024. In order to make the next century a sustainable and safe 100 years of living, the whole city will focus its efforts to realize a carbon neutral society.”

Hiroyuki Tsutsumi, Executive Officer, SEVP Japan Region CEO at Fujitsu Limited, comments: “Fujitsu has been collaborating with Kawasaki City over the years in co-creation projects that focus on local issues to contribute to the solution of global environmental problems. This is also one of the key areas of Fujitsu’s materiality.
With initiatives like this as a point of departure, Fujitsu, as a community development partner in Kawasaki City, will continue working together with people at the grassroots level to co-create solutions for a range of societal issues. We will also continue striving to realize a decarbonized society both in Japan and globally as part of the Japanese Ministry of the Environment's ‘National Movement for New and Prosperous Lifestyles toward Decarbonization (Decokatsu)’ ⁽³⁾.”

A new milestone under an ongoing effort to develop sustainable communities

Fujitsu and Kawasaki City in 2014 signed a framework agreement to promote sustainable community development, which they further strengthened in 2021 ⁽⁴⁾. As part of their initiatives in “Environment,” one of their focus themes within their agreement, the two partners collaborate on the creation of a system to promote environmentally friendly actions.

Initiatives included recent field trials using the environmental app conducted between October 10, 2022 and March 31, 2023 as part of the “Carbon Zero Action Mizonokuchi” project in the carbon-free model region Mizonokuchi in Kawasaki City to test how usage of the app impacts behavior and encourages environmentally friendly lifestyles for residents and people working in Kawasaki City.

One of the key findings of this trial was that rewards (e.g. coupons for sustainable products, services and activities offered by partner organizations) led to an increase in environmentally friendly actions amongst citizens who participated in environment campaigns and events or viewed related contents through the environmental app.

The two parties further found that citizens are more likely to continue such environmentally friendly behavior when they feel personally involved and when they receive interesting and entertaining information that boost engagement.

Based on these results, Fujitsu and Kawasaki decided to conduct field trials building on gamification and community elements such as community gatherings to further promote environmentally friendly actions.

Overview of the field trials

1. Roles and responsibilities

Kawasaki City: Planning of further measures based on the results of the verification tests
Fujitsu: Overall planning, application development, verification tests

2. Period

December 4, 2023 to March 31, 2024 (planned)

3. Contents of the trials

• Offering of the city building game “Green Carb0n Farm”
  The two parties will offer "Green Carb0n Farm," a city building game jointly developed by SEGA XD CO., LTD. and Fujitsu on the environmental application starting December 4, 2023. "Green Carb0n Farm" is a game where users can create buildings within the scenery of Kawasaki in combination with actual environmentally friendly actions. In this way, the two parties aim to promote environmentally friendly behavior among citizens.
  
  
• Activities in cooperation with the fan community
  Fujitsu and Kawasaki City will also cooperate with various fan communities in Kawasaki City and promote projects to encourage environmentally friendly actions through the environmental app. The two parties will then examine whether interaction between participants with common interests contributes to an increase in environmentally friendly behavior. As a pioneer project, the two parties already conducted field trials with the fan community of the American Football team “Fujitsu Frontiers.”
  
  
• Provision of analysis dashboard for environmentally friendly actions
  In addition to quantifying citizens' environmentally friendly actions and the resulting CO2 emissions reductions, Fujitsu and Kawasaki City will further provide a dashboard that enables analysis of the relevance and trends of attributes of environmentally friendly actions. In this way, the two parties will create opportunities for collaboration among business operators by presenting recommended environmentally friendly actions. In addition to examining the effects of environmental contributions, Fujitsu and Kawasaki City will examine the impact of these actions on business promotion.
  
  

Figure 2: Business dashboard screen image (in Japanese)

Future Plans

Moving forward, Kawasaki City will examine new approaches to drive behavioral changes among citizens and businesses based on the field trials. In addition, Kawasaki City will continue to promote initiatives to achieve net-zero CO2 emissions by 2050 in cooperation with various entities, including companies and organizations, that participate in the “Carbon Zero Action Mizonokuchi” project.

To support the promotion of ongoing environmentally friendly actions, Fujitsu will revamp its environmental app with designs and specifications that support intuitive usage and visualize citizens’ contributions to the city. Fujitsu will also use safe and secure data distribution technology to analyze data related to actions for the environment collected through the environmental application to encourage the participation of more businesses. In this way, Fujitsu will support businesses in verifying the effects of their environmental contributions and in planning environmental measures.

Through these efforts, Fujitsu aims to promote the practical implementation of Social Digital Twins ⁽⁵⁾, a technology to digitally reproduce various information in urban environments, thereby contributing to the realization of a decarbonized society.

• [1]
  Green Carb0n Farm :
  Fujitsu is currently in the process of registering this trademark in Japan
• [2]
  SEGA XD CO., LTD. :
  Head office: Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo; President and CEO: Hidetaka Tani
• [3]
  National Movement for New and Prosperous Lifestyles toward Decarbonization (Decokatsu) :
  Movement promoted by the Japanese Ministry of the Environment with the aim to change people's behavior and lifestyle to realize a new and prosperous life leading to decarbonization
  https://ondankataisaku.env.go.jp/decokatsu/en/
• [4]
  Fujitsu, City of Kawasaki Strengthen Cooperation to Realize a Sustainable “Future City” (press release, June 23, 2021)
• [5]
  Social Digital Twin :
  A group of technologies that digitally reproduce the relationships and connections between people, goods, the economy and society to offer a simulation, prediction and decision-making environment in which to solve diverse and complex social issues.

Related Links

• Kawasaki City and Fujitsu launch field trials to promote behavioral change to contribute to the realization of a carbon neutral society (press release, October 31, 2022) (in Japanese)
• SEGA XD participates in initiative of Fujitsu and Kawsaki City to promote behavioral changes to realize a carbon neutral society, develops minituare garden game (press release SEGA XD, November 16, 2023) (in Japanese)
• Fujitsu Frontiers participates in ‘Green Carb0n Club’ field trials to increase environmental action in Kawasaki City toward the realization of a carbon neutral society (press release Fujitsu Frontiers, October 17, 2023) (in Japanese)
• “Green Carb0n Club” application (in Japanese)

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