Policy landscape

As part of an update of its KBH 2025 Climate Plan, the city of Copenhagen’s new Climate Strategy 2035 came into effect in January 2026. Copenhagen is targeting a state of climate positivity within the city’s boundaries by 2035. To achieve these objectives, the city is focusing its efforts on completely decarbonizing its energy and transport systems, heavily reducing construction-related carbon footprints with zero-emission construction sites and low carbon materials, and limiting its consumption-based emissions from approximately 10 tCO₂e in 2019 to around 5 tCO₂e in 2035.

In addition to maximizing the reduction of its territorial emissions, the city is pursuing significant amounts of carbon removal to balance its residual emissions from hard-to-abate sectors and remove more CO₂ than it emits by 2035 to counter its consumption-based emissions. The cornerstone of its negative emissions planning is to capture and store biogenic CO₂ from (organic) waste (waste-to-energy (WtE) CCS) or biomass incineration (BECCS). However, the strategy still lacks clarity on expected scale of residual emissions, the volume of removals needed, and the delivery mechanisms. This is notable as Copenhagen initially envisaged relying on a WtE CCS project led by the publicly owned Amager Resource Centre (ARC) for its carbon removal needs, but had to take a step back due to funding ineligibility and regulatory uncertainty. This left a 434,000-tonne CO₂ gap in reaching climate neutrality and prompted a strategic pivot away from its original 2025 climate neutrality goal.

BECCS remains an important part of its Climate Strategy 2035, with expected support for projects at ARC and HOFOR’s biomass-fired plants, both emitting significant amounts of biogenic CO₂. The City Council allocated DKK 450 million to advance CCS within the city, complementing national level support. At the national level, the Danish Energy Agency issues CCS tenders and other funding opportunities for CCS. Meanwhile, the multi-stakeholder INNO-CCUS partnership, funded by Innovation Fund Denmark, supports over 30 research projects to advance scalable, cost-effective CCS and CDR solutions. This broader innovation ecosystem is essential to supporting Copenhagen’s local ambitions. Copenhagen’s role in the EU Climate Neutral Cities Mission reinforces its focus on cross-sector infrastructure and system integration, though responsibility for CO₂ transport and storage remains diffuse and enabling policy frameworks are still evolving. Local stakeholders are exploring other CDR methods. It serves as the central hub for the nation’s Rockstart Biochar Network and is investigating ways to convert urban organic waste into biochar for use in climate-neutral concrete production and promoting the use of bio-based building materials.

Governance landscape

Copenhagen’s climate governance is led by the Climate, Environment and Technical Administration, under the strategic direction of the City Council and its Climate, Technical and Environmental Committee. The Climate Section within the Department for Climate and City Development oversees key planning documents, including the Climate Strategy 2035, while a dedicated unit under the Department for Mobility, Climate Action and City Structures oversees the Climate Adaptation Plan. Responsibility for implementing the city’s BECCS efforts lies with municipal utilities. ARC runs the CopenHill WtE plant and is developing the CopenCapture WtE CCS project. HOFOR, the city’s majority-owned energy and water utility, is preparing a BECCS project at its Amagerværket biomass plant. These initiatives enjoy strong political backing, including a City Council allocation of DKK 50 million in December 2023 for CCS planning at HOFOR, with mayoral support. Copenhagen also participates in the Carbon Capture Cluster Copenhagen (C4), a regional partnership coordinating CO₂ capture, transport, and storage.

Despite strong coordination and public ownership of key assets, Copenhagen lacks a dedicated unit or cross-departmental mechanism for managing CDR city-wide. It also remains unclear where responsibilities for planning and coordinating the implementation of carbon removal solutions beyond WtE CCS and BECCS would lie. The city has yet to undertake an evaluation of potential carbon removal project approval bottlenecks which could inform governance and policy innovation and strategic funding efforts. Nonetheless, Copenhagen’s high-level political commitment, institutional capacity, and active role in global city networks position it well to strengthen CDR governance over time.

Gaps and opportunities

• Copenhagen lacks a city-level strategy and implementation roadmap for CDR to meet its 2030 and 2035 climate targets.
• CDR efforts are heavily reliant on large-scale, capital-intensive WtE CCS and BECCS projects, while stable local financing mechanisms to support pilot and demonstration projects in other CDR methods are absent.
• Biogenic emissions from other plants, such as the sewage sludge incineration plant operated by wastewater utility BIOFOS, are not integrated into a broader BECCS strategy.
• The absence of a centralised CDR implementation framework risks fragmentation and missed opportunities for the systemic integration of CDR and carbon sinks in the urban environment.
• Wastewater-related removals, such as pyrolysis of sewage sludge into biochar or wastewater alkalinity enhancement , represent a promising but largely untapped CDR vector within city services.
• Mass-timber and bio-based construction in Copenhagen present significant carbon sequestration potential, with the capacity to turn buildings into carbon sinks rather than carbon emitters.

Core recommendations

1

Calculate the expected residual emissions to reach climate positivity by 2035 as a yardstick for the minimum amount of required CDR and demand signal to developers.

 

2

Assess the carbon removal potential within the city boundary to guide research funding and pilot project development across a diversified portfolio of carbon removal methods and deployment pathways.

 

3

Develop a municipal CDR roadmap as a follow up to the Climate Strategy 2035 that integrates both large-scale and decentralised approaches across short, medium and long-term time horizons. 

 

4

Prioritise embedding CDR in existing urban systems and infrastructure, including wastewater management, waste-to-energy systems, and urban greening.

 

5

Integrate carbon sinks in stormwater infrastructure, combining this with its “sponge city” green design, looking specifically at nature-based solutions, biochar and carbon-negative concrete.

 

6

Leverage CDR for embodied carbon reduction and use this as a strategic growth sector by supporting mass-timber, bio-based construction, and integration of biochar and carbonated materials in aggregates.

 

7

Develop clear and robust accounting frameworks for tracking and financing CDR activities, potentially in collaboration with other cities in Scandinavia.

In collaboration with: