Digital Green Transition

Digitisation is a vital part of the solution to one of the biggest challenges facing societies today: Climate change. In the years to come, Denmark will accelerate the deployment of data and emerging technologies to support the green transition.

Accelerating the use of digitisation and emerging technologies

Digitisation has great potential to decrease greenhouse gas emissions and help societies adapt to climate change. Denmark has set ambitious goals to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and is a global frontrunner on the green transition as well as an efficient digital public sector.

The Agency for Digital Government works to accelerate the digital green transition by supporting and utilizing digital solutions, data and emerging technologies. For instance, the signature projects funded by the Danish National Uptake Fund for New.

Technologies show how data-driven solutions can optimize the consumption of energy in public buildings and machine learning can support warning systems for extreme weather events.

Read more about the The Danish National Uptake Fund for New Technologies

Green data and datacenters

Data concerning emissions and environmental impact as well as data processing itself is a vital part of the digital green transition as well as the uptake and implementation of emerging technologies.

The Agency for Digital Government works in cooperation with other ministries to ensure that relevant public data concerning emissions and environmental impact is accessible to the private sector, knowledge institutions and public authorities.

However, the increasing volume of data, digital solutions and emerging technologies also increase energy usage, and thus greenhouse gas emissions. To combat this trend, the Agency for Digital Government has examined what green requirements the public sector can include in tenders for datacenters, server rooms and cloud services, and reached the conclusion that the EU's Green Public Procurement criteria is the most appropriate to use. The criteria will be tested in selected public procurement processes throughout 2022 and the first half of 2023.

Broad cooperation

The digital green transition is a broad effort that involves cooperation with many partners and stakeholders. Denmark has a strong tradition of joint public cooperation between the Government, Local Government Denmark and Danish Regions on digitisation. This cooperation now also includes supporting the green transition.

Furthermore, the Agency for Digital Government works closely with partners in the Nordic Council of Ministers and the European Union on matters related to the digital green transition, data and emerging technologies. In 2021, MR-Digital commissioned a study of the digital green transition in the Nordic-Baltic countries, which provided a roadmap of the current status as well as policy proposals going forward.