28 May 2019
New Credit Card Empowers Consumers to Limit Their Climate Impact
story highlights

The "Do card," a credit card offered by Swedish financial company Doconnomy, allows consumers to track the emissions related their purchases and offers options to buy offsets.

The card uses the Åland Index to quantify consumers' carbon footprint and compute offset costs using the World Bank's carbon price.

Consumers can use the data supplied to either reduce their carbon footprint through behavior change, or to buy offset credits from UN-certified projects that reduce, avoid or remove GHG emissions.

30 April 2019: Doconnomy, a Swedish financial company, has launched a credit card allowing consumers to track the climate impact of their purchases and offers options to offset emissions corresponding with individual results.

Many people want to contribute personally to the maximum 1.5°C climate target and believe it important to consume in a responsible way. A 2016 WWF survey on climate change in Sweden found most consumers there wanted to see climate labeling on financial products. They now can use a credit card, launched in April by Swedish company Doconomy, that allows users to track and reduce the carbon footprint associated with their purchases. Users can also directly compensate for their GHG emissions, through projects meeting the criteria of UN-certified green projects. To identify the carbon dioxide (CO2) impact of each transaction, the Do card uses the Åland Index, developed in 2017 by Bank of Aland in Finland.

In an interview with Reuters Sustainability, Åland Index explained the application quantifies consumers’ carbon footprint and the social cost of carbon by using Environmental Social Governance (ESG) data. In its development, revenues and CO2 data were analyzed by KPMG, a financial audit, tax and advisory firm headquartered in Switzerland, and matched with the top 50 merchant category codes from MasterCard. This allows calculating the average carbon footprint per category for every Euro spent. The Åland Index matches the footprint with the individual spending and computes the cost by using the price of carbon from the World Bank. The Index then suggests offset options (donations or by lifestyle) corresponding with individual results.

Partnering with the UNFCCC, the initiative encourages users to compensate their carbon footprints in UN-certified projects that reduce, avoid or remove GHG emissions. The projects are implemented in developing countries and are rewarded with Certified Emission Reductions (CERs) as well as Gold Standard. Ranging from cleaner-burning cook stoves to wind-generated electricity and clean waste disposal, all projects contribute to global emissions reductions. The Do card will offer various themes to which consumers can direct their money. A savings product by the company offers an interest rate that includes investment in climate-friendly projects. [UNFCCC Press Release] [World Economic Forum Press Release]

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