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Our environmental mission is one of the
strengths of the Group, and we intend to
convincingly communicate this to our
customers and all other stakeholders to
ensure that it makes a large contribution to
business (profit-making business).
Koichi Yokoyama
Director and Managing Executive Officer
in Charge of Infrastructure Strategy
The Group established the Environmental Principles as part of its environmental initiatives in 1998. We acquired ISO 14001 certification for our Head Office building in 2000, and have been working continually to reduce our environmental impact and improve our environmental performance by establishing and operating an environment management system. Addressing climate change as we work for decarbonization is an important initiative for the Group. This initiative closely aligns with the achievement of one of our seven material issues: “contributing to the creation of an enriching society that is in harmony with the global environment.”
We recognize that people’s growing concern regarding the environment in the future represents a large business opportunity for the Group, as we have been at the forefront of environmental initiatives. In addition to reinforcing sales of environmentally friendly products, we will expand our EV-related business, and explore the feasibility of a future renewable energy agency business for households. Through these environmental initiatives, we will create the social value of “achieving household carbon neutrality,” which we believe will in turn enhance our corporate value. Initiatives for transitioning the energy used at each business site to renewable energy will make a large contributionto reducing the corporate financial burden, which will depend on the amount of greenhouse gas emissions when Japan introduces carbon pricing in the future.
Amidst the need to reduce GHG emissions throughout the supply chain as we aim to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050, we believe that an active approach to visualization and reduction of GHG emissions based on their correct calculation, and the knowledge gained from such initiatives, are essential requirements for the Group to maintain sustainable business relationships with home appliance manufacturers and other suppliers.
As will be described in more detail later in this document, we have also participated in a variety of international initiatives and external initiatives, and taken other steps to steadily take action and produce results in the areas in which the Group operates.
As a result, when we take an overall look at the environmental initiatives of the Group, we are confident that we are among the leading environmental corporations, remaining a step ahead both within our industry and within the retail industry as a whole.
The Prime Market where the Joshin Group is listed is positioned as a market for listing corporations that are targets for investment by international investors. This requires corporate governance with English document disclosure with greater quantity and quality, and that disclosure needs to be based onthe TCFD and other frameworks.
Under these conditions, our leading initiatives in addressing climate change have raised the social evaluation of the Group among investors and all other stakeholders. We will continue to work to improve the image of the Group and strengthen our branding in order to generate the desire to buy among consumers.
In the near future, our previous and current actions for mitigating climate change will likely become the norm for businesses, underscoring the significance of being proactive and ahead of the curve on this issue.
The Joshin Group is a retail business and we do not have plants as businesses in the manufacturing industry do. When we consider what the Group can do as a retail business to achieve decarbonization, we see that the majority of the Group’s GHG emissions are produced by the use of power at our stores (business sites). For this reason, we have prioritized the use of renewable energy for the power used at business sites, and have steadily carried out this change.
The achievement of 100% renewable energy at business sites that contract directly with power suppliers, and the completion of solar power generating systems at 100% of our business sites where such installation is possible, are parts of the action plan that we worked to achieve in fiscal 2023 in the roadmap for environmental issues announced by the Group. We were successful in achieving both of these goals as planned during fiscal 2023.
In the future, we will continue to tenaciously negotiate with tenants regarding the introduction of renewable energy, aiming to achieve 100% renewable energy at all business sites including tenants by 2040. Regarding the installation of solar power generating systems, since there will be no space left to install solar panels at our business sites, we are actively working to introduce corporate power purchase agreements (PPA) where solar panels are installed at locations separate from our business sites. Our goals are to achieve a 25% in-house consumption rate by 2030 for total power consumed by business sites that contract directly with power suppliers, and a 50% rate by 2050.
As one of our international strategies, we obtained SBT certification, which we had previously applied for, of our sciencebased targets for reduction of GHG emissions by 2030 that are consistent with the levels required by the Paris Agreement.
The largest topic for fiscal 2023 was our acquiring an A score, the highest CDP rating, for our information disclosure under the CDP Climate Change Program that we began responding to in fiscal 2021. We received a score of C in the first year of our response in 2021, and moved up one rank to B in fiscal 2022. In fiscal 2023, the third year, we moved up two ranks and were able to achieve a score of A.
In fiscal 2023, 1,985 Japanese corporations responded to the CDP questionnaire. Among them, just 112 Japanese corporations (including the Company) received an A score. We believe that this shows how the Group’s initiatives to mitigate climate change and promote information disclosure have been highly evaluated internationally. Beginning from fiscal 2024,we will improve the quality and accuracy of our disclosed information to maintain our A score.
In 2023, we were selected for the second consecutive year as a component stock in the FTSE Blossom Japan Index stock price index for Japanese corporations that are actively working for ESG (Environment, Society, and Governance) initiatives. We were also selected for the third consecutive year for the FTSE Blossom Japan Sector Relative Index that evaluates the quality of action related to risks and opportunities involved in transitioning to a low-carbon economy. Both of these indexes are used as standards for ESG investment decisions by the Japanese Government Pension Investment Fund (GPIF), which is one of the largest pension funds in the world.
In the future, we will continue to engage with our partners to reduce GHG emissions, working towards achieving the SBT targets. At the same time, through initiatives for achieving carbon neutrality, we will reinforce the relationship between our ESG initiatives and the Group’s business and connect it to new environmental business.
While it is also an issue that we are presently working on, our environmental mission is one of the strengths of the Group, and we intend to convincingly communicate this to our customers and all other stakeholders to ensure that it makes a large contribution to business (profit-making business).
As part of efforts to reinforce this branding, we will strongly promote our A score for CDP initiatives, achievement of 100% renewable energy at business sites that contract directly with power suppliers, and other accomplishments through signage at business sites and our homepage.
In order to prevent problems such as a loss of sales strength for environmentally friendly products resulting from insufficient environmental education of employees, we are also proceeding with creation of a skills improvement plan system focusing on environmental education.
This will further reinforce sales of environmentally friendly products and renovations, products that have long been a focus of our sales and contribute to household carbon neutrality, and will promote wider use of products with high energy generation, energy storage, and energy conservation performance. We will also strengthen our proposal ability and promote sales of home EV charging equipment and other EV-related products in order to strengthen our earning power
In regards to initiatives for biodiversity, we recognize that climate change is a major causes contributing to the loss of biodiversity and that we require a nature-positive approach based on the dual goals of carbon neutrality and getting back on course to prevent loss of biodiversity. In September 2023, the Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD), an information framework related to natural capital, was released. We believed that through this disclosure of nature-related information, corporate initiatives to preserve biodiversity will accelerate rapidly, and that disclosure based on the TNFD framework will become necessary in the future, just as it has for TCFD.
The Joshin Group has positioned preservation of biodiversity as one of its material issues to be addressed. We have begun with a LEAP approach for identifying and analyzing how we engage with natural resources as part of the retail industry, including store construction, product procurement, delivery and installation, and scrapping and recycling of used products, in other words our dependence on, impacts on, and risks and opportunities involved with nature. We first intend to advance to a level where we are capable of simplified TNFD disclosure. We will also clearly connect these initiatives related to biodiversity to the branding of our environmental mission.
