Brazilian bank unveils country’s first ‘carbon calculator’

Brazil’s C6 Bank last month announced the launch of its carbon calculator, a mobile app feature which tells customers how much “climate change” they are causing with their transactions.

Through collaboration with Thought Machine, a banking technology startup, C6 now allows its customers to view the carbon emissions caused by their payment transfers and credit card transactions. A monthly gas payment or a plane ticket, for instance, will be calculated in carbon emissions.

C6 customers can also choose to “offset” their carbon emissions by paying money through the app to fund forest conservation projects in the Amazon.

While the carbon calculator is Brazil’s first, the concept has already been implemented in other globalist countries.

Canada’s Vancouver City Credit Union, known as Vancity, introduced a Visa card which tracks customers’ carbon footprints as part of its  “commitment to climate action”. Vancity partnered with climate technology company ecolytiq to develop the card, which not only tracks customers’ carbon emissions but also tells them how they can remedy their actions. 

“The ecolytiq solution combines climate awareness, education, and behavioral nudging in its tool for financial institutions,” said Vancity in a statement. 

Visa follows Mastercard, which partnered with Swedish FinTech firm Doconomy in 2019 to develop a carbon calculator for banks around the world.

In Australia, a mobile app feature from Commonwealth Bank launched in 2021 also tracks the carbon footprints of its customers based on their transactions. The app then analyzes the customer’s carbon footprint, including how many trees were destroyed by the customer’s behavior. The customer is notified within the app and is offered the opportunity to pay to offset the harm they caused the environment.  

CommBank told Frontline News that the atonement is accomplished when the customer purchases Australian Carbon Credit Units (ACCUs). An ACCU is a financial instrument issued by Australia’s Clean Energy Regulator for the abatement of carbon emissions and represents one carbon ton removed from the atmosphere. 

The technology used by CommBank was developed by CoGo, an environmental tech startup which builds similar products for individuals and businesses for internal use. CoGo currently offers a similar app in which individuals can connect their bank account and learn how many carbon emissions they are guilty of based on their transactions.  

In the Netherlands, Dutch bank Rabobank rolled out a mobile application last year year called Carbon Insights in which bank customers can track their CO2 impact with each purchase. In August, Rabo Carbon Bank CEO Barbara Baarsma proposed a limit be placed on citizens’ carbon emissions, which would be tracked via their transactions and purchases. People would then be able to sell any unused “carbon credits” to others. 

Like Vancity’s Carbon Counter, CommBank’s carbon emissions tracker only estimates your carbon emissions based on general data on the environmental impact of different types of transactions. 

But technology that can monitor each individual transaction — and activity — for its carbon footprint may not be long in coming.