Climate Plan 2035

The City of Copenhagen is developing a new climate plan that will aim to further reduce the city’s CO₂ emissions and at the same time demonstrate how cities can work ambitiously on tackling the global climate crisis.

The decision to draw up a new climate plan for the city, was made by Copenhagen's City Council in September 2021. In December 2023 the following goals were politically adopted for the further development of Climate Plan 2035: 

  1. Achieving climate positivity by 2035 with respect to direct CO2-emissions within the city boundaries (territorial emissions).
  2. Halving the per capita global CO2-emissions associated with Copenhageners consumption by 2035 compared to 2019 – corresponding to a goal of reducing consumption-based emissions to 5 tons CO2 per citizen by 2035.

The latter includes a sub-goal of halving CO2 emissions from the City’s own procurement by 2035 compared to. 

All three climate goals go beyond the climate initiatives in the current KBH2025 Climate Plan, which the City Council approved on 23 August 2012. Climate Plan 2035 will succeed the existing plan, enter into force on 1 January 2026 and apply until 2035.

Involvement

All actors in Copenhagen – citizens, businesses, and the municipality itself – need to pull in the same direction if we are to succeed in making the transition that tackling the climate crisis demands.

The new climate plan must not only comprise efforts that lower CO₂ emissions from our energy consumption, energy production and transport. The new objectives mean that the climate plan must also address Copenhageners' consumption of food, clothing, electronics and travel, and the construction of new housing and infrastructure, etc. to reduce the global CO₂-emissions that these activities lead to.

Necessary efforts can only be developed in collaboration with the city's citizens and those companies and organizations that are active within the relevant consumption areas. Therefore, we are inviting companies and other organizations to get involved in the development and implementation of Climate Plan 2035. Citizens are to be involved via, amongst other things, a Citizen Assembly on Climate and several local Climate Summits.

The goals of these engagement activities are to understand the various challenges and to find solutions to these together.