MyData, my climate, and my carbon
With COP26 taking place this week, governments, companies, and individuals are discussing how we can all reduce our carbon emissions. The task is monumental, and technology has an important role to play – both in reducing its own carbon footprint and in helping the wider world track and reduce their emissions.
Keeping to 1.5 degrees will require action at multiple levels, including the individual level. Personal data holds the potential to make us more carbon-conscious: for example, by tracking our energy consumption, travel, purchases, and more. MyData Global enables users to simply connect different data sources together and build a comprehensive overview of their carbon use.
Below are a few examples from MyData Global’s supporting companies and organisations that are helping people improve their sustainability.
Enfuce’s My Carbon Action: Understanding CO2 our footprints based on financial transactions
Enfuce, based in Finland, is a forerunner in the fast-moving financial technology (fintech) world. Enfuce offers payment, open banking, and sustainability services (such as carbon tracking) to banks, fintechs, financial institutions, and merchants.
Enfuce has created My Carbon Action, a digital tool to track carbon footprints based on financial transactions. My Carbon Action allows banks and financial institutions to instantly calculate the carbon footprint of individual transactions. The calculation takes into account the environmental impacts of a product’s entire lifecycle: from raw material extraction, manufacturing, and transport, to use and disposal. This provides consumers with individual insights on the environmental effects of their consumption.
My Carbon Action is also based on users’ own input on individual lifestyle choices. The lifestyle choices can relate to, for example, these main areas:
- Diet:Are you vegan, lacto-ovo vegetarian, or a meat-lover?
- Housing: Do you live in a house or an apartment? How is it heated?
- Mode of transportation: Walking, cycling, public transport, car sharing, or your own car?
- Shopping: What is the origin of your purchase? How is it shipped and packaged?
By combining transaction information with customers’ lifestyle choices, individuals can be advised on how to make more sustainable decisions.
Enfuce is based on leading scientific models. Read more about My Carbon Action.
S Group My Purchases (Omat ostot): Tracking carbon via food consumption
S Group is a customer-owned Finnish network of companies in the retail and service sectors, with more than 1,800 outlets. It is one of the largest retail companies in Finland, with over 2.5 million customer owners.
S Group’s My Purchases (Omat ostot) is a free service that allows customers to analyse their consumption, taking advantage of the extensive and detailed data of their purchases. It allows the consumer to track personal purchases over the past year, and includes a calculator that indicates the carbon footprint of the food the consumer has purchased.
The aim is to inspire people to make better and more responsible choices. The transparency in customers’ own buying behaviour and the easy-to-use service have made it very popular amongst customers, with over 350,000 users.
S Group’s My Purchases service won gold in the Media Lions series in the Use of Real-time Data category. Responsibility and access to one’s own data were key factors of the win.
Find out more about S Group and My Purchases.
Lyon: Saving on your energy, water, and gas consumption
Lyon is the third-largest city and second-largest urban area in France. For several years, Lyon has worked on various projects that use citizens’ data whilst respecting their digital rights to create services and make citizens’ lives easier including their Ecolyo energy service.
The Ecolyo service is a dashboard that allows users to understand and control their energy and water expenses in their home. The dashboard visualises, in a very simple way, their electricity, gas, and water consumption in the same place (in euros, kWh, and litres) and at different time scales. Ecolyo also rewards energy savings with offers on lower prices.
A positive and ambitious outcome at COP26 will be key to tackling climate change. Finding data-driven, ethical solutions that enable individuals to minimise their footprint in a way that works for them will be vital in meeting national and global targets. The MyData Declaration outlines the steps that should be taken for a fair, sustainable, and prosperous digital society, chief of which is empowering people with their data.
