Nippon Professional Baseball (NPB), the official organization of Japanese professional baseball teams, and its 12 member teams announced on March 17, 2008, that they are starting an anti-global warming project this season, called the NPB2008 Green Baseball Project, and joining up with the Team Minus Six Percent campaign promoted by Japan's Ministry of the Environment.

For their first step, they will focus on shortening the length of games to a target of three hours and six minutes, which is minus six percent (12 minutes) from the average time of three hours and 18 minutes during the past decade. By achieving that goal they expect a reduction of 376,000 kilowatt-hours from the total power consumption of the combined 864 official games in a year -- the equivalent to a reduction of about 209 tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions.

To shorten game times, they made several changes to game-management rules, such as placing a limit on the time allowed for interchanging offensive and defensive teams to two minutes and 15 seconds, and mandating an interval between pitches of 15 seconds or less when there are no offensive players on the bases. The NPB is showing the average game time of each team and each of the two leagues on its website, and they will purchase CO2 emission credits if they fail to achieve their goal.

In addition, they are going to use green power sources to light all 58 night games scheduled in Environment Month, which is June, by utilizing the Green Power Certification System.


- Environment Ministry Promotes 'Team Minus 6%' Global Warming Campaign (Related JFS article)
http://www.japanfs.org/db/1069-e
- Japanese Pro Baseball Game Powered by Renewable Energy (Related JFS article)
http://www.japanfs.org/db/1959-e

Posted: 2008/07/13 02:40:11 PM

TAG Energy , Global warming , Non-manufacturing industry