There are plenty of reasons for people to try to reduce their carbon footprint, ranging from savings on their energy bills to doing the right thing to save the planet. Working on the premise that there's nothing quite so persuasive as cold, hard cash, a new website aims to add a financial incentive by awarding consumers credits for their reductions and then converting those credits into cash.

MyEex was launched in March as an information exchange aimed at lowering carbon footprints, and has since expanded into a worldwide personal carbon exchange. To participate, consumers begin by creating a profile on the free site and then using historical data on their utility bill to enter their household electric and heat usage for the past 12 months. Taking seasonal variation into account, MyEex uses that data to calculate the household's baseline usage. Consumers then set about trying to reduce their footprint, with help from MyEex's community section, tips, blogs and other sources of advice. Each month they enter their current usage amounts, and the site certifies those reductions and awards members carbon credits similar to those currently granted to companies, states and countries. Through its partnership with OceanConnect, it then sells those Certified Emissions Reductions (CERs) on the Voluntary Carbon Market—one CER is equivalent to one ton reduced, with prices varying between USD 10 and USD 25 per CER, it says—and returns the earnings to consumers via PayPal. Meanwhile, the site itself makes a commission on the brokerage of those carbon credits.Consumers from anywhere in the world can use New York-based MyEex, though weather data is still being collected for international locations.

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