Liu Minxia

mllmx@msn.com

CHINA CITIC Bank, with its credit card center headquartered in Shenzhen, said Friday that it is recruiting 1,000 clients to help test its newly developed “carbon account,” a novel approach to track and calculate individuals’ carbon footprints using financial transaction data.

The initial group of participants, by trying their hands at the beta version of the carbon accounting product, will have the chance to learn how much greenhouse gas they will avoid emitting by opting for certain kinds of financial services, for example, online utility bill payments, applications for e-credit cards and electronic bank statements. The participants will be tasked to give feedback and advice on the product.

For the final version of the carbon accounting service, participants will be able to calculate the carbon emissions brought by a wider range of their behaviors, including transportation and the recycling of secondhand items, the bank said.

Including financial transaction data in carbon calculators is increasingly popular worldwide, and CITIC Bank’s new service makes it the first bank in China to offer such carbon calculating services for individuals, it said.

CITIC Bank also released a green paper Friday on low-carbon living based on a survey of an undisclosed number of people aged between 22 and 60 and living in nearly 200 Chinese cities.

A collaborative produce of CITIC Bank’s partnership with global market research giant Ipsos and Sina Finance’s ESG (environmental, social, and governance) rating center, the green paper focuses on people’s attitudes towards and expectations for future low-carbon living and consumption, providing the basis for the design of the new carbon account service, the bank said.

CITIC Bank said it hopes the innovative service, which it jointly developed with CIAM Carbon Assets Management Ltd. and through communications and collaborations with the China Emissions Exchange (Shenzhen) and the Shanghai Environment and Energy Exchange, can help individuals as well as enterprises become aware of and reduce their climate impact, so as to enable China to reach its CO2 emissions peak before 2030 and achieve carbon neutrality before 2060.

The bank’s preliminary estimates show that its customers can help reduce carbon emissions by more than 2 million tons every year by opting to use online financial services.