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Emission omission: Transportation minister in hot water
Christian Wenande
February 2nd, 2022
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This article is more than 2 years old.
Several parties up in arms after it emerged that Benny Engelbrecht withheld key climate figures as part of massive infrastructure plan
When the government unveiled its immense 160 billion kroner ‘Denmark Forward’ infrastructure proposal last April, it suggested the plan was CO2 neutral.
But recently Ingeniøren newspaper published a series of articles sowing doubt about that statement.
And to boot, back when the proposal was revealed, Engelbrecht informed Parliament that figures for CO2 emissions regarding the plan didn’t exist.
Except they did, and Engelbrecht has been accused of deliberately keeping them from the other parties.
“This is quite serious. They had the figures we specifically requested to see, but we were told that the numbers are part of the usual projection that the Energy Agency [Energistyrelsen] produces for the entire country every year,” Henning Hyllested, the spokesperson on transport issues for Enhedslisten party, told DR Nyheder.
READ ALSO: Copenhagen feels left out of huge infrastructure plans
Unacceptable explanation
Engelbrecht, meanwhile, said that the decision not to release the figures was because they were not precise enough and therefore could not be used.
But Hyllested doesn’t buy that explanation, arguing that it is normal for the parties to receive figures from the government that are “subject to uncertainty”.
“We think they wanted to present the deal as green – the climate crisis is underway and we all want to be seen as green – but they’ve known that there are huge CO2 emissions relating to laying these new roads,” said Hyllested.
The parties will meet a number of times this week to ascertain why they haven’t received the CO2 emission figures.
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