How Atmos Calculates Carbon Impact
When you deposit your money with Atmos, we pledge that those deposits will be used exclusively to fund climate-positive infrastructure and accelerate our transition to a clean, fair and transformed economy. That means things like renewable energy, energy efficiency overhauls, electric transportation, green construction, regenerative agriculture and so much more. If you’d like to see more of the types of projects we will and won’t fund, you can view them on the Impact page.
Atmos is partnering with financial institutions to fund these projects with your deposits. Once those deposits are placed we’ll show you the precise carbon impact of your account balances based on specific fundings and update this reference to maintain complete and constant accuracy. In the meantime, we’re showing you the indicative impact of intentional banking with Atmos to illustrate just how much power your money has.
To calculate indicative impact, Atmos assumes 80% of Atmos deposits are deployed into utility-scale solar projects(1) and used the EPA’s Avoided Emissions and Generation Tool AVERT to determine the avoided emissions per Megawatt (MW) of utility-scale solar(2) installed evenly across each of the 14 regions in the US. This is just the beginning. We're excited to unveil all of the good things to come.
The short answer
Indicative annual emissions avoided per dollar deposited in Atmos (2021-11-22):
1.85 lbs CO2e avoided / $ of deposits / year
The long answer
1.85 lbs Co2e per dollar per year
C = 1.85 / 365 = 0.00506lbs CO2e avoided per dollar per day (our daily carbon-dollar coefficient)
Daily Impact (CO2 avoided) = Daily Active Balance (USD) * C (lbs CO2e)
Cumulative = Sum [Daily Impact (T0 - Ti)] / 2000 tons CO2e
1) 20% conservatively maintained for capital reserves, typical of standard banking loan-to-deposit ratios.
2) Utility-scale solar is one of the most widespread and lowest-cost forms of renewable energy in the US. In 2020, it made up 53 of all 89 Gigawatts (GW) of solar in the US according to the Solar Energy Industry Association, and all-in costs can be as low as $0.70/W according to Lawrence Berkeley National Labs. Atmos utilized a standardized deployment cost of $1/W.
