This is a throwback of what happened 2 months ago, but this writing is about the project itself, rather than my experience. For experience wise, you can read the full story here.

We participated in PayHack 2024, quite a big hackathon event with many talented individuals.

Our project, Eco Finance, focuses on the implementation of a carbon tax expected to be released in 2026. Although it initially targets specific industries, it is crucial and trending to implement this for everyone in Malaysia. Read more about the 2026 carbon tax here.

European countries are already implementing ESG-centric policies in various industries, such as the automobile industry. These are just preliminary steps; now we want to delve deeper into the subject.

The main dashboard of our project.

Understanding the Ideology

Do you know how much carbon footprint you generate from ordering a Shopee parcel? Or how much carbon you generate by driving to work instead of taking public transport? It's challenging for people to visualize their footprint. Hence, we're here to make this visible to people, increasing their awareness about this issue. According to Visa, 80% of Malaysians are aware of the environmental impact of consumption. With the release of Malaysia's largest payment gateway provider and the latest project linking banks,

How It Works

The OpenFinance API can seamlessly integrate people's transaction details, allowing us to aggregate a person's transactions and their carbon footprints. The calculation would be the emission factor times the amount, giving us the carbon footprint from those transactions.

For example, if the emission factor for a specific merchant category is 0.5 kg CO2 per RM, and a person spends RM 100, the carbon footprint would be 0.5 kg CO2/RM * 100 RM = 50 kg CO2.

There's an established merchant category code (MCC) in transaction details, where we only need to fine-tune and investigate the actual emission factors for each merchant code. This could be done by collaborating with the Department of Statistics Malaysia (DOSM) to conduct surveys and research among Malaysians. In this project, we are using dummy variables based on this ideology only.

Monetizing the Ecosystem

We circulate this whole ecosystem by monetizing it. We extract carbon credits from them using the formula from WORLDMETER, where the baseline of average carbon emission per person in Malaysia is 8 tons per year. With that, we can pool up carbon credits, extracted from the surplus from the calculation. There's a proven market potential with Bursa Carbon Exchange (BCX), established on 9 Dec 2022, which is available to trade carbon credits in Malaysia. Then we sell the carbon credits to major companies in Malaysia like Petronas and Maybank to help them offset their carbon credits. Read more about BCX here.

From Petronas, it's evident that their future plan aims for net-zero carbon emission by 2050. This proves there is a market in Malaysia, and more people will enter the market and participate.

Encouraging Eco-Friendly Spending Habits

How do we encourage eco-friendly spending habits in Malaysia? We aim to attract more people, even those who are not initially interested in eco-friendly practices, to join us. We can make Malaysia greener and more sustainable, at least in the sense of ESG. We choose to reward users with healthy spending habits in terms of eco-friendly spending and reward them with cash for being environmentally friendly.

The whole business plan of eco-finance

Sustainable Business Model

We can summarize the business circulation here and make it sustainable as well, where we can become self-sustaining:

1. Collect carbon credits from users
2. Pool up carbon credits
3. Certify carbon credits with Bursa Carbon Exchange (BCX)
4. Sell carbon credits to companies who need them
5. Reward users to encourage eco-friendly spending habits.

Basically that's it.

Project Random Thingy

Now, it's about the random thingys of the project. We have the project hosted at this link. Although it is not fully complete, it serves as a prototype and is yet to be an MVP. Considering we had only 24 hours to complete this from idea to execution, I mean, it's good for a first-timer. Right...?

You can access the hosted project prototype here.

Feel free to browse through it. If you have any questions, please email me, and I'll personally explain it to you. You can also see the admin page by accessing here or by changing the /dashboard to /admin. It looks something like this:

Admin page for eco-finance

Feel free to browse through it.

Wrap-Up

In conclusion, Eco Finance aims to make carbon footprints visible to individuals, encouraging eco-friendly spending habits and contributing to a greener Malaysia. By monetizing carbon credits and rewarding users, we create a sustainable ecosystem that benefits both the environment and the economy. It's really kesian that we couldn't make it to final though T.T

Hope you guys like it :D

Oh btw! Once again.. You can read the full story here.

References

1. Bursa Malaysia Voluntary Carbon Market Exchange (BCX)
   Bursa Malaysia has launched a voluntary carbon market exchange to facilitate the trading of carbon credits and promote sustainability efforts.
   Source
2. Malaysian Consumer Attitudes Towards Sustainability
   A study by Visa highlights that 80% of Malaysian consumers aim to minimize their environmental impact, with a preference for digital payments over cash as a more sustainable option.
   Source
3. Implementation of Carbon Tax in Malaysia by 2026
   The Malaysian government has announced plans to introduce a carbon tax on the iron, steel, and energy industries by 2026 as part of its efforts to reduce carbon emissions.
   Source
4. Petronas' Net-Zero Commitment
   Petronas has pledged to achieve net-zero carbon emissions by 2050 through various sustainability initiatives and investments in renewable energy.
   Source
5. Global Carbon Credit Baseline
   A global overview of CO₂ emissions per capita, providing insights into carbon credit benchmarks and sustainability efforts worldwide.
   Source