Aarhus lowers 2030 climate target to 85 percent reduction

Aarhus Municipality has abandoned its goal of reaching climate neutrality by 2030 and will instead target at least an 85 percent reduction in emissions, with an ambition of reaching 90 percent, DR reports, citing TV2 East Jutland.

The change was agreed on Wednesday by the parties included in the municipality’s climate agreement. Aarhus had pursued climate neutrality by 2030 since 2008.

Liv Gro Jensen, a city council member for SFSF, said the parties would have preferred to retain the 100 percent target but accepted the 90 percent ambition to ensure that action followed the goal.

“There is no doubt that we would have preferred to remain at 100 percent. But we have accepted a target of 90 percent because there is also great value in putting action behind the target,” she said.

Christian Budde, political leader of Venstre in Aarhus City Council, said several assumptions behind the 2030 climate-neutrality target had proved unrealistic.

One example was a planned carbon capture project at Kredsløb Energy Park Lisbjerg, a waste-to-energy plant that produces electricity and district heating by burning waste. The project would have captured 435,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide annually, but Aarhus City Council unanimously abandoned it in December.

Aarhus Mayor Anders Winnerskjold said at the time that reaching the 2030 target would be very difficult.

Budde said he was still proud of Aarhus’s climate ambitions and described it as “the greenest municipality in the whole kingdom.”