Feel guilty about fueling up that gas guzzler or buying that box of incandescent bulbs? Would you feel better if, instead of frequent flier miles or cash, your credit card’s rewards programme allowed you to offset your role in global warming?

General Electric is betting you will. GE’s GE Money Earth Rewards Platinum MasterCard allows cardholders to forgo a 1% cash rebate on purchases and earmark that amount for projects that reduce greenhouse gases. In months when they feel short of money, cardholders can opt to contribute half and take half in cash.

GE will keep a running tally of the amounts, and each Earth Day it will use the total to buy offsets of greenhouse gas emissions. The offsets will be purchased by GE AES Greenhouse Gas Services, a joint venture between GE Energy Financial Services and the AES Corp, a power company.

“GE has a commercial finance group that creates carbon offsets, a finance division that creates credit cards, and of course, Ecomagination,” said Tom Gentile, chief marketing officer for GE Money, referring to GE’s programme to develop green products. “We are in a perfect position to help people make a difference through their purchases.”

Environmentalists are not quite as sure. “It’s ironic,” said Michael J

Brune, executive director for the Rainforest Action Network. “GE supplies parts for coal-fired plants, so its credit card offsets emissions it helps create.”

Others worry about more direct conflicts of interest. At myearthrewards.com, the new card’s Website, consumers can calculate their carbon footprint and read tips for reducing it, like buying compact fluorescent light bulbs and energy-efficient appliances, items that GE sells.

Moreover, GE is a big player in carbon offset projects, both directly as an investor and indirectly as a manufacturer of wind turbines and other alternative energy devices.

Kevin Walsh, managing director of renewable energy for GE Energy Financial Services, said that GE is supporting only projects that have been certified by third parties to be effective and that would not have happened without carbon offsets. The joint venture first will buy offsets from projects that capture methane from landfills and coal mines. Later, it will add reforestation and alternative energy projects. “GE Money’s credit card is just one of many customers for our pipeline of projects,” Walsh said.

The card will have no annual fee and will charge annual interest of 12.99 to 18.99%, depending on the cardholder’s credit history.

GE insists that even small purchases add up.

Twenty-five cents—or 1% of a $25 purchase—can offset a month’s emissions from a refrigerator. If someone charges $750 each month, 1% would come to $90 for the year—enough to offset air conditioning, driving and pretty much all of the activities that yield the 10,000 metric tonnes of greenhouse gases that GE says a consumer produces each year on average. “We are not sending a message that you can buy your way out of your environmental responsibility,” said Lorraine Bolsinger, vice president of GE Ecomagination. “We’re offering another tool in the kit for reducing carbon footprints.”

GE is keeping everything about the card as green as possible. It is spurning paper applications, insisting that people apply online or by phone. Although by law it must send paper bills when asked, it is encouraging cardholders to receive and pay their bills online. It plans no direct mail and will advertise on search engines like Google and on environmental sites like treehugger.com.