Green frontrunner or indebted culprit? Assessing Denmark’s climate targets in light of fair contributions under the Paris Agreement

This paper contributes to academic and policy debates about climate leadership by illustrating an approach to examining national emission reduction targets focusing on Denmark. Widely recognized as a climate leader, Denmark is cherished for both its historical track record and its current climate targets. With a target of 70% emissions reduction by 2030 compared to 1990 stipulated in national law, central actors in Danish policymaking claim that domestic climate policy is aligned with the Paris temperature goals and present Denmark as a ‘green frontrunner.’ We examine the pledges and targets enshrined in the Danish Climate Act in reference to a 1.5 °C global greenhouse gas budget using five different approaches to burden sharing. For all five approaches, we find that the Danish climate target is inadequate given the 1.5 °C goal. Moreover, when only looking at equity approaches for distributive climate justice globally, the Danish target appears drastically insufficient. Denmark is, in this sense, not a green frontrunner but rather an indebted culprit, challenging the dominant narrative in Danish climate policy. Our results thus call into question the premise of the claim of Danish climate leadership, which works to legitimize existing policy and obscure the many dimensions of climate change.