Tick tock goes Denmark’s climate clock

The 57-year-old politician became a minister in 2022 after 15 years as director of an energy industry association. Just in April, he narrowly survived a no-confidence vote after he withheld information about the state of the national power grid from Denmark’s parliament. 

“I think it’s very clear that Lars Aagaard is and has been under a lot of pressure,” said Jens Mattias Clausen, EU director at Danish green think tank Concito. “He definitely needs to be able to show to parliament that he can deliver on this.”  

Ahead of parliamentary elections next year, Aagaard’s centrist Moderates party is polling below 4 percent. 

Denmark, traditionally the EU’s foremost climate champion, “is one of the few countries in the EU where climate as a political priority still has a lot of weight,” Clausen added. “So if they don’t deliver a strong 2040 target, quite a few of the parties in opposition will use that as a political weapon in the domestic debate.” 

Plus, at this year’s U.N. summit in Brazil in November, the Danish minister will co-negotiate on behalf of the EU alongside the Commission — the senior-most role for a Dane at global climate talks since a Copenhagen-hosted 2009 conference. 

The 2009 conference is marked in the history books as one that collapsed in disarray. With “Copenhagen” now a byword for calamitous negotiations among climate diplomats, Aagaard will be under pressure to help erase Denmark’s U.N. summit trauma with a better performance in Brazil. 

Aagaard downplayed his own, domestic political stakes: “I’m there to serve Europe,” he said. “That’s the only thing that’s on my mind.”