Cogo's jargon buster

A Certified B Corporation (B Corp) is a company that meets the highest standards for social and environmental performance.

Behavioural science incorporates knowledge from fields such as psychology, anthropology and neuroscience with the goal of understanding, predicting and changing human behaviour. At Cogo, we use both qualitative and quantitative methods to generate behavioural insights, which are used to inform our product design.

Cogo’s Business Carbon Manager (BCM) enables small and medium businesses (SMEs) to measure, understand and reduce their carbon footprint. Cogo’s BCM can be integrated directly into businesses’ banking experience or through their financial management software.

Carbon data is essentially information about carbon emissions that helps quantify an individual/organisational/country’s environmental impact.

Carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) is a unit for measuring carbon footprints. It expresses the impact of greenhouse gases (GHG) in terms of the amount of CO2 that would create the same amount of warming. So that a carbon footprint consisting of multiple greenhouse gases (GHG) can be expressed as a single number.

Carbon emissions are the emissions that are released into the atmosphere from the burning of fossil fuels.

A carbon footprint is the total amount of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions that are released into the atmosphere as a result of our actions. A carbon footprint is expressed as CO2e, or carbon dioxide equivalent.

Carbon literacy is a term used to describe an awareness of climate change and the environmental impact of everyday actions.

Carbon management is about measuring and reducing the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in an organisation’s supply chain.

Carbon neutrality refers to a state in which the same amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) going into the atmosphere is balanced by the amount being removed.

Carbon offsetting involves investing in projects that reduce/remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, in order to compensate for carbon emissions made elsewhere.

Carbon tracking involves measuring carbon emissions from direct and indirect sources.

Climate actions are activities that individuals can do to reduce their carbon footprint, such as taking more public transport. We use cutting-edge behavioural science techniques to nudge users to make more sustainable choices.

Climate change refers to long-term shifts in global temperatures and weather patterns. The recent rise in average global temperatures is mainly due to burning fossil fuels and intensive land use.

Collective action refers to the collaborative efforts of a group of people working together towards a common goal. At Cogo, we believe in the power of collective action. We have built our business off the belief that millions of small changes made by millions of individuals can have a significant impact and help us solve the climate crisis.

Conference of the Parties (COP) is the annual meeting of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Parties.

A conscious consumer is someone who considers the social, environmental, and political impact of their purchasing decisions.

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is a self-regulating business model that helps companies hold themselves accountable for the impact their actions have on employees, customers, and the environment.

Eco-anxiety is a psychological disorder affecting an increasing number of individuals who worry about the devastating impact of the climate crisis.

An emissions factor (EF) is a coefficient that attempts to quantify how many greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are released into the atmosphere by an activity.

Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) is a set of standards that measure a company’s impact on the environment and society, as well as the quality of its governance.

Environmentally extended input-output (EEIO) models analyse the emissions intensity of each part of the economy in a way that not only covers each industry’s direct emissions but also incorporates upstream supply chain emissions.

Fossil fuels are resources, like coal, natural gas and oil, that are burned to generate power. When burned, they release large amounts of carbon dioxide, and trap heat in the atmosphere, causing global warming.

The Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero (GFANZ) is a global coalition of leading financial institutions committed to accelerating the decarbonisation of the economy.

The Greenhouse Gas Protocol establishes comprehensive global standardised frameworks for measuring and managing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from private and public sector operations and value chains.

Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are gases, like carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide, that trap heat in the earth’s atmosphere.

Greenhushing is when businesses underreport their sustainable practices to their stakeholders to avoid scrutiny.

Greenwashing is when a company or individual makes a misleading claim about their environmental impact, causing people to think they are more sustainable than they are.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is the scientific group assembled by the United Nations to assess climate change.

Net zero refers to a state in which the same amount of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions going into the atmosphere is balanced by the amount being removed.

Nudge theory is a concept in behavioural science that proposes that changes in the decision-making environment influence behaviour. At Cogo, we incorporate nudges in our products to steer people towards a low-carbon lifestyle.

Open banking is a system that provides third-party access to financial data through the use of application programming interfaces (APIs). Open banking enables Cogo to access banking users’ transactional data, and use this to calculate carbon footprints.

The Paris Agreement is an international treaty on climate change adopted by 196 Parties at COP21 in Paris, 2015. Its goal is to limit global warming below 1.5°C, compared to pre-industrial levels.

Cogo’s Personal Carbon Manager (PCM) provides retail customers with their real-time carbon footprint, anywhere, anytime. By pairing live banking data and Cogo’s carbon footprint model, customers can track how much carbon is associated with their spending.

Cogo’s Quantified Climate Actions (or QCAs) give users calculated savings that are highly personalised, based on users’ spending. Savings are calculated for individual transactions, categories and periods.

Scope emissions are essentially a way of categorising the carbon emissions a company emits in its operations and its wider value chain.

Socially Responsible Investment, or SRI, is a strategy that considers the environmental and social impact of an investment, as well as its financial returns.

Cogo’s Static Climate Actions (or SCAs) have generic, average savings. These are not personalised to the user (e.g. “the average user saves 50kg of CO2e a year by installing LED light bulbs”).

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) were established by the UN in 2015 as a call to action to end poverty, hunger, and discrimination, and to protect our planet.

Sustainable finance refers to the process of taking environmental, social and governance (ESG) considerations into account when making investment decisions in the financial sector.

A sustainable taxonomy is a tool that helps investors understand whether an economic activity is sustainable.

TCFD stands for Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures. It is a global organisation formed to develop a set of recommended climate-related disclosures that companies and financial institutions can use to better inform investors, shareholders and the public of their climate-related financial risks.

Transactional data is any information that is gathered from a transaction. At Cogo, we map spend-based carbon data to transactional data, such as bank and credit card transactions, to calculate users’ carbon footprints.

The UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) sets out the regulations and principles for international climate change cooperation.