Published on September 16, 2026
The creation of the Climate Dividend by Team for the Planet stems from a radical decision we made: not to distribute financial profits to our members.
Team for the Planet’s goal is not to maximize the money redistributed to investors, but to maximize their impact on the climate. The profits generated by the innovations we fund are therefore intended to be reinvested to finance new solutions capable, in turn, of massively reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
But this decision quickly brought us face-to-face with a crucial question.
If our members aren’t expecting a financial return, how can they measure the climate return on their investment?
How can they know what their money has actually helped achieve? How can we compare the impact of €100, €1,000, or €10,000 invested in climate solutions?
And above all: how can we avoid settling for feel-good stories, empty promises, or indicators that are difficult to compare with one another?
It was precisely this question that gave rise to the idea of the Climate Dividend.
The initial impetus for this line of thinking was the search for a simple way to measure the “climate return” on money allocated to a project. However, there was no real standardized indicator that could provide a straightforward answer to this question.
The idea then became clear: what if we created the climate equivalent of a financial dividend?
The principle of the financial dividend is well known.
A company conducts business, creates economic value, may generate profits, and can decide to distribute a portion of those profits to its shareholders.
The dividend thus makes visible a portion of the economic value created by the company, but some companies also create another form of value.
They develop a material with a lower carbon footprint. They replace a high-emission industrial process. They enable energy production without fossil fuels. They improve a building’s energy efficiency. They extend the lifespan of an object. They reduce a ship’s fuel consumption, and so on.
In other words, their activities can lead to lower greenhouse gas emissions than would have occurred without them.
This climate value exists, but for a long time, it has been much more difficult to measure, standardize, and—above all—link it to the investors who have enabled these solutions to develop.
The Climate Dividend is based on a very simple idea: 1 metric ton of CO₂e avoided or sequestered = 1 Climate Dividend.
A company can therefore measure the emissions avoided or sequestered through its operations and, when the conditions are met, issue the corresponding Climate Dividends.
These can then be distributed to its shareholders. The Climate Dividend thus becomes, in a sense, the climate counterpart to the financial dividend.
On one hand, the economic value created. On the other, the climate value created.
The Climate Dividend is a non-financial indicator that measures a company’s positive contribution to the decarbonization of the economy.
It focuses in particular on the greenhouse gas emissions that a company’s commercialized solutions help avoid or, in some cases, sequester.
Let’s take a deliberately simple example:
Imagine a company that develops a technology enabling a factory to dry its products using far less fossil fuel. Before installing this technology, the factory emits, for example, 1,000 metric tons of CO₂e per year for this operation. With the new solution, it emits only 600 metric tons.
All other things being equal, 400 metric tons of CO₂e have therefore been avoided compared to the baseline scenario.
It is this difference that we seek to measure.
The reasoning seems simple. In reality, however, numerous factors must obviously be taken into account: the equipment’s lifespan, its own carbon footprint, the energy mix, the scenario that would have actually occurred without the solution, the various stakeholders who contributed to bringing it to market, and so on.
This is precisely why the Climate Dividend is based on a common, standardized methodology.
This is probably one of the most important concepts for understanding the Climate Dividend.
For several years now, companies have been learning to measure their carbon footprint.
This is essential.
A company must know how much greenhouse gas its operations generate—directly or indirectly—and then seek to reduce that footprint.
But this does not answer another question: “Do the products or services this company brings to market enable the rest of the economy to emit less?”
Let’s take the example provided by ADEME of a solar panel manufacturer.
Manufacturing a solar panel generates emissions: extraction and processing of raw materials, manufacturing, transportation, installation…
The company therefore does indeed have a carbon footprint.
But its product then makes it possible to generate electricity as a substitute for energy sources that are potentially much higher in carbon emissions.
It can therefore simultaneously emit CO₂ as part of its operations and help prevent much larger emissions elsewhere in the economy.
These two pieces of information must not be confused.
The carbon footprint answers the question: “What is my footprint?”
The Climate Dividend answers another question: “How much decarbonization have I contributed to through the solutions I’ve brought to market?”
These are two different yet complementary indicators.
To say that one metric ton of CO₂ has been “avoided” necessarily requires answering one question: avoided relative to what?
That is the whole point of the baseline scenario.
If an innovation had not existed, what solution would likely have been used in its place?
Let’s take a company that markets a new, more energy-efficient heating system.
To calculate avoided emissions, it’s not enough to simply measure what the system emits.
We must determine what the customer would likely have used without this solution, calculate the corresponding emissions, and then compare the two scenarios.
It is the difference between these two scenarios that allows us to assess the avoided emissions.
This logic is important because it avoids an overly simplistic line of reasoning that treats any technology marketed as “green” as automatically positive.
The Climate Dividend protocol draws in particular on existing research regarding avoided emissions and on the recommendations of the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD).
This is obviously one of the main risks when discussing environmental impact.
A company might be tempted to announce: “Our product avoided 100,000 metric tons of CO₂ this year.”
But how was this figure calculated? What baseline scenario was used? Was the solution’s entire life cycle taken into account? Have the same emissions been claimed by multiple stakeholders? Has the figure been verified?
Without common rules, comparing two companies would become virtually impossible.
The Climate Dividend is therefore based on a public protocol, with eligibility criteria, calculation methods, allocation rules, and a requirement for verification by an independent third party. Transparency in reporting is also one of the program’s core principles.
The goal is to transform a very vague claim—“our company is good for the climate”—into something much more precise:
here is the amount of emissions avoided or sequestered that our business has helped generate, here’s how it was calculated, and here’s how that calculation was verified.
Decarbonization is rarely the result of a single actor.
Let’s take an industrial innovation as an example.
There may be the company that invents the technology, the one that produces certain components, the one that installs it, the one that markets it, and finally the customer who uses it.
All of them have potentially played a role.
But we obviously cannot allow five different actors to each claim 100% of the same avoided emissions.
The protocol therefore provides mechanisms for allocating the impact among the various actors who have contributed to the value chain.
This is a key point: the goal is not to artificially create an impact, but to better account for the actual contribution of the various stakeholders to decarbonization.
Another essential distinction: the Climate Dividend is not a carbon credit.
If you receive Climate Dividends corresponding to 10 metric tons of CO₂e avoided, this does not mean you can subtract 10 metric tons from your own emissions.
You cannot say, “I emitted 20 metric tons, but I received 10 Climate Dividends, so I ultimately emitted only 10 metric tons.”
That is not its purpose.
The Climate Dividend does not seek to erase the carbon footprint of the person who holds it.
It measures their contribution to financing solutions that help decarbonize the economy.
It is therefore based on the concept of contribution rather than offsetting.
This difference is fundamental: everyone remains responsible for reducing their own carbon footprint, regardless of the climate solutions they may finance elsewhere.
This is where the mechanism comes full circle to the question that gave rise to it.
Citizens and companies invest in Team for the Planet.
Team for the Planet uses this money to identify, fund, and support innovations capable of making a massive contribution to reducing global greenhouse gas emissions.
These companies develop their solutions. They bring them to market. The solutions begin to be used on a larger scale. And when they replace higher-carbon alternatives, they prevent emissions.
These avoided emissions are calculated according to the Climate Dividend methodology and are subject to independent verification.
The corresponding Climate Dividends can then be distributed to their shareholders, including Team for the Planet.
Team for the Planet can then, in turn, distribute the Climate Dividends it receives to its own shareholders.
This is a way to gradually establish a link between the euro initially invested and the actual climate impact generated several years later.
This difference may seem subtle.
In reality, it is fundamental.
Today, there are countless investments, funds, and companies that market themselves as “green,” “sustainable,” “responsible,” or “impact-driven.”
But these terms don’t necessarily answer a very concrete question: What measurable climate impact has my investment helped to produce?
This is precisely what we at Team for the Planet wanted to be able to measure, and the Climate Dividend makes this contribution visible.
The value of the Climate Dividend therefore goes far beyond simply communicating a company’s impact. It raises a much deeper question about the role of investment.
Today, two companies can be evaluated very precisely based on their economic performance. We can determine their revenue, profitability, growth, market capitalization, debt levels, and even the financial dividends they’ve distributed.
However, when we want to compare their contributions to the climate transition, the tools available are far less sophisticated.
The Climate Dividend adds a new dimension to this analysis.
Let’s imagine two investments of 1 million euros. They may have the same financial return, but the first might contribute to the deployment of a solution that avoids relatively few emissions, while the second helps avoid thousands. From a purely financial perspective, these two investments may seem comparable.
From a climate perspective, they are not necessarily so.
Being able to measure this difference allows us to begin asking a new question:
What is the climate return on my capital?
This is likely the most important goal behind the Climate Dividend. Over the centuries, our economy has developed an extremely sophisticated language for discussing financial value. We know how to measure a return down to the decimal point. We know how to compare two investments. We know how to calculate the value created by an investment over ten or twenty years. We know how to allocate that value among different shareholders.
But we’re still much less adept at measuring the climate value created by capital. That is precisely the role of the Climate Dividend.
Not by replacing financial indicators. Not by replacing the carbon footprint. Not by converting metric tons of CO₂ into euros.
But by adding a piece of information that investors often still lack: the amount of decarbonization to which their capital has contributed.
That’s why Team for the Planet created and promoted the Climate Dividend.
Because when we decided not to distribute financial dividends, another question immediately arose: if the return we seek above all else is climate-related, then we must be able to measure it.
The Climate Dividend is the answer to that question.
A deliberately simple unit:
1 Climate Dividend = 1 metric ton of CO₂e avoided or sequestered.
Behind this simplicity, of course, lies a much more complex process involving measurement, methodology, attribution, transparency, and verification.
But the ultimate goal remains very easy to understand.
For a long time, when an investor assessed the success of their investment, one question overshadowed all others: “How much has my money earned me?”
We believe that this question will remain important in the future.
But it may be accompanied by a second one: “How many metric tons of CO₂ has my money helped prevent?”
It is precisely this second answer that the Climate Dividend aims to make visible.