Your Personal Carbon Calculator? Photo: Mastercard
By Dian Cohen
Local Journalism Initiative
We’ve been hearing for years now that the big challenge is to limit global warming to below 1.5C above the pre-industrial era. Now comes word from the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service that June was the hottest ever, the 13th consecutive time a month has set a new average temperature record. The average for the year through June 2024 was 1.64C higher than the era from 1850 to 1900. This suggests that, if we don’t want to spontaneously go up in flames, we will have to work our tails off to achieve the emissions targets to which Canada has agreed.
How we get motivated to do that is the challenge. Most of us are broadly aware that a flight from Montreal or Toronto to Rome or Riyadh makes a lot of CO2 emissions. COVID provided concrete proof that less flying reduces CO2 emissions – they went down more than 5 per cent in just the first few months of COVID. But we have no real idea what difference it makes to the environment if we recycle our plastics, or if we go out for a nice steak dinner, or if we buy a brand-new outfit in a high-end retail store.
The fact is that the vast majority of global greenhouse gas emissions are generated from our lifestyle choices. Industry and regulators are unlikely to solve the climate crisis — most emissions are directly connected to consumer demand. So if we’re going reach our global decarbonization targets, we have to change our habits, and it would help if we could know how much our individual actions count.
There may be a way to do just that, although email conversations with the creators leave some doubt. A Sustainable Consumption Index has been developed by Mastercard and Doconomy, a Swedish fintech company. Here’s how they say it works. Mastercard takes its total debit transactions (it makes them anonymous) and categorizes them into spending categories – food, transportation, retail, etc. Then it adjusts for inflation so comparison with past years is possible. Doconomy has created an index of estimated CO2 emissions for each of the spending transactions. The index can create interactive simulations of the impact of a population-wide shift to low-carbon consumption. For example, it can answer the question, “what’s the impact of everyone using a carpool or public transit, or eating less meat, or buying more second-hand ‘vintage’ goods compared to current emission levels from driving a car, eating lots of steak and burgers or buying new retail goods?”
Does it work? That’s as yet unknown. Sweden was motivated to try it out apparently because they already knew that individual Swedes need to reduce their emissions fivefold by 2050 to meet that country’s climate change commitments. So they took it on: the two companies created the index starting in Q1 2021, using Swedish data. The quantitative measure of Sweden’s aggregate consumer carbon footprint was launched publicly this past June. So far, one example of the consumption index shows that emissions resulting from spending on air travel and fuel are not declining as fast as those on retail spending. It also shows that there’s been a 2 per cent reduction in national emissions from Q1 2023 to Q1 2024.
Maybe this new measurement tool could be a step forward in the battle for a cooler planet. Up to now, we’ve been working in hindsight, looking at what has happened in the past to inform our decisions going forward. The Doconomy index purports to be forward looking, reaching people before they back out of the driveway, book their cabs, buy their T-shirts or fire up the barbeque. The Swedish Environmental Protection Agency says the simulation models can be used by manufacturers, advertisers and policy-makers to encourage Swedes to change their buying habits toward more sustainable choices.
The two companies have also created a personal Carbon Calculator app that’s supposed to show the impact of individual users’ purchases. The idea is that if we have insight into the effect our day-to-day footprint has on the planet, we can make small adjustments resulting in real change. The Carbon Calculator allows us to view the estimated carbon footprint of all our purchases. Our footprint is tracked month by month across a variety of spending categories so we can better understand where we’re having the greatest impact.
Except of course that the index is available only in Sweden right now and it’s still not clear that a majority of Swedes are aware of it. The spokespeople for Mastercard and Docomony were most forthcoming about what they had already published in their own news releases. But then your spunky reporter asked questions like
How would Canada begin if we wanted an index like the one created for Sweden? Who would have to contract with Doconomy and Mastercard? Would it be the government? the financial community? how does that work? How much does it cost to have an index created? How long does it take? Once you were contracted, would you use earlier years of Mastercard spending to create the index? Has there been a lot of publicity in Sweden about the index and how to use it? Have you had a lot of feedback from consumers? Do any other countries have such an index?
Your waiting-with-bated-breath-reporter has been ghosted. It’s been a month since our last correspondence with either Mastercard or Doconomy.
It’s an interesting idea, and maybe the two companies will be more forthcoming. I’m still hoping for a response.
Cohendian560@gmail.com