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By Dan Wilchins and Timothy Gardner

NEW YORK (Reuters) - General Electric Co. began offering a credit card on Wednesday that will set aside money to reduce greenhouse gases based on how much the cardholder spends.

Called the GE Money Earth Rewards Platinum Mastercard, it has a rewards program that gives U.S. consumers a penny for every dollar they spend that can be devoted to reducing greenhouse gas emissions at landfills and coal mines.

For GE, the world's second-largest company by market capitalization, the card is a way to bolster revenue from its credit card business as the company tries to generate $20 billion of sales from eco-friendly products by 2010.

Some environmentalists said the card was more a way for consumers to assuage guilt than to have a material impact on the environment, but the company sees the move as a first step for people hoping to do their part.

As part of the program, GE and power company AES said they have established standards for creating and selling U.S. greenhouse gas credits. All of customers' reward dollars can be used to buy the credits, or half the reward dollars can be used for credits and half returned to consumers as cash back.

A person spending $750 a month on the card for 12 months can generate enough reward dollars to offset their direct carbon use for a year, said Tom Gentile, chief marketing officer GE unit GE Money, at a press event.

GE Money is a big issuer of credit cards, both in its own name and on behalf of retailers and other companies. It has some 58 million of cards outstanding globally, with some $44 billion of receivables outstanding, as of the end of the second quarter.