🇩🇰 Spotlight on a leading EU country in global carbon management: Denmark 🇩🇰

Danish Minister for Climate, Energy and Utilities Lars Aagaard wrote a powerful op-ed last week underscoring #Denmark’s commitment to a net-negative future. Key tools: Carbon Capture and Storage (#CCS) and Carbon Dioxide Removal (#CDR).

This op-ed was published just days before this week’s IPCC report (see my summary here: https://lnkd.in/eQB8HnaF) emphasized CCS/CDR as necessary tools for reaching #netzero. Here are some key takeaways from Mr. Aagaard:

🌡 Excluding CCS and CDR from the world’s toolbox for keeping temperatures below 1.5ºC is no longer viable; remaining emissions must be balanced by #carbonremoval.

🌏 In the long term, the whole world will have to go #netnegative to achieve the 1.5ºC goal. Removing CO2 is necessary not only to reach Denmark’s goals, but also the EU’s.

🖋 Denmark advocates for the European Commission's proposal for a certification framework for carbon removal emphasizing high environmental integrity for both biological and technological #CDR methods.

🇪🇺 Carbon removals and negative emissions should be integrated into the EU's Emission Trading Scheme (#ETS) in the future to bring costs and emissions down while developing a European market for negative emissions.

So, what carbon management actions has Denmark been taking?

🇩🇰 The Danish government announced a few months ago its goal to be climate neutral by 2045 – with an emissions target of -70% by 2030 compared to 1990 levels – and remove more #GHG than the country emits.

🗺 The country developed a Green CCUS Roadmap which includes a 2030 target of 4 to 9 million tons per year through CCUS, among which #biochar, #BECCS, and #DACCS could also play a role.

🔑 The Danish Long Term Strategy (#LTS) aims to create a €100 million subsidy to develop the Power-to-X sector, which could include CDR technologies like DACCS.

✅ Denmark has also established project #Greensand, a cross-border offshore CO2 storage project covering the full value chain from capture to transport to storage. It could store up to 8 million tons of CO2/year – emitted from Denmark and other EU countries – from 2030.

It is empowering and hopeful to see leaders like Danish Minister Lars Aagaard push for reducing and removing emissions. While we commit to a future of emitting less, we must also take care of the CO2 we’ve already emitted.

Who are other climate leaders in the EU that you follow? Where do you hope to see similar commitments?

Read Mr. Aargaard’s full op-ed here: https://lnkd.in/epZFPM_w