TOKYO >> The Environment Ministry will launch a five-year test project that quantifies a person’s individual efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions through environmentally conscious actions. The project will start this year.

The ministry will build a system using digital technologies, including AI, to objectively verify a person’s carbon emissions. By providing financial incentives that will be proportionate to the amount of greenhouse gas emissions cut, the goal is to encourage people to adopt a lifestyle geared toward decarbonization.

The ministry envisions a consortium of private-sector firms and local governments administering the project.

Upon consent, the group will collect private citizens’ behavioral history, via smartphone apps and other means, to incentivize living a decarbonized lifestyle.

Specifically, the aim is to encourage people to take steps such as using an electricity provider that generates power from renewable sources; changing their means of transportation from cars to public transport; buying environmentally friendly products such as electric vehicles; and changing the temperature settings of home heating and cooling appliances.

Using AI, individuals’ behaviors will be analyzed to assess their carbon dioxide reduction, and each person will be provided suggestions for saving energy based on their history, to help them adjust their lifestyle.

The system will tally the amount of carbon dioxide each person has cut, and the information will be used for a rewards program involving supermarkets and major online shopping sites.

The ministry has budgeted about $14.8 million (1.8 billion yen) for the project this year. It began accepting applications Jan. 25.

The ministry plans on tech firms, power companies, home appliance makers, automakers, retailers and local governments participating in the project. It anticipates that about 100,000 people will participate voluntarily.

When the project is completed, the ministry will draw up guidelines for assessing decarbonization, including how to calculate reductions.

The ministry is considering eventually creating a market where individuals and private companies can use objective data to trade their emissions reductions.

“We want to create a mechanism in which companies that want to tout their environmental credentials can buy emissions reductions produced by individuals, thus enabling firms to factor such cuts into their own carbon dioxide reductions,” a senior ministry official said.

In Japan, households account for 60% of all greenhouse gas emissions, and the government has concluded that to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050, it is vital for people to change their lifestyles.