Together for 1.5
The lack of a carbon budget has Denmark falling behind its climate targets and the updated NECP needs to provide a concrete direction on this.
– At the halfway mark in 2025, Denmark currently looks only to be achieving 29% of the way to its 2030 target.
– As higher-than-expected emissions were registered in the last years, Denmark needs to revise its 2030-target to 80% reduction.
– Denmark needs to achieve at least another 4-5 MT reduction before 2025 in order to continue to claim to be in line with 1.5C.
In 2020 Denmark adopted an economy-wide 2030 target of 70% reduction compared to 1990. The 70% target would have been in line with Paris and with IPCCs 1.5C report if the reduction had been linear. However, since the adoption of the target, Denmark has pursued a “hockey stick” path towards 2030. To fulfil the 70% target Denmark must reduce its annual emissions 46MT in 2020 to 23.5MT in 2030, this means a reduction of 22.5MT CO2 in the decade 2020 to 2030. Current projections show that Denmark – at the halfway point in 2025 – will only have delivered reductions of 6.5 MT leaving most of the 22.5 MT reductions, 16 MT, to be solved in the last half of the decade.
Thanks to its Hockey Stick policies Denmark’s 70% reduction target is no longer in line with Paris’s 1.5C target. Denmark both needs to move its 2030 target to 80% reduction and will need to achieve further 4-5MT reduction before 2025 for the Danish climate target to remain in line with Paris’s 1.5C Target.