Export to Denmark service

Focus areas

DANIDA focusses on four areas of interest:

• Human rights and democracy
• Green growth
• Social progress
• Stability and protection.

As of 2015, DANIDA was involved in a total of 73 countries and regions across the world, with 21 countries of high priority. Most of the priority countries are among the poorest of the world, located in Africa and Asia.

The sectors receiving the largest amount of financial bilateral support is government and civil society, and humanitarian aid, at roughly 28% and 14% respectively.

Most of the goals of DANIDA’s projects gets fulfilled, with an annual success rate between 79% and 88% since 2005.

History

Danish development assistance in the 1950s was nearly exclusively channeled through the United Nations. In 1962, Denmark established its first bilateral development assistance programme for developing countries under the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. In 2010, about 40% of Denmark’s bilateral assistance went to social sectors, including education and health. Danida also works in collaboration with the United Nations, the World Bank, regional development banks and the European Union

Denmark has considerable sources of oil and natural gas in the North Sea and ranked as number 32 in the world among net exporters of crude oil in 2008. Denmark expects to be self-sufficient with oil until 2050. However, gas resources are expected to decline, and production may decline below consumption in 2020, making imports necessary. Denmark imports around 12% of its energy (this statistic includes all forms of energy, not just electricity).

Denmark has drastically decreased production of electricity from coal, and in 2019 it constituted less than 11% of the electricity production. Coal and all other fossil fuels, plus waste burned for electricity, amounted to 20% of the electricity production. The other 80% of the electricity produced came from renewables: wind power (57%; see wind power in Denmark), biomass and other combustible renewables (20%) and solar power (3%).

Development of CO₂ emissions

Denmark is a net importer of electricity: domestic production of electricity was equal to 83% of the total consumption, while net imports were 17% of the total consumption. The electricity Denmark imported came in large part from hydroelectricity and nuclear power (both being low-carbon sources). As a result, Denmark used hydroelectricity despite domestic production of it being close to zero; and part of the electricity consumed (3-4% according to older data) came from nuclear power, despite the country having no nuclear power stations.

In February 2011 the Danish government announced the “Energy Strategy 2050” with the aim to be fully independent of fossil fuels by 2050, and a new government repeated the goal in 2015 despite public scepticism. The European Renewables Directive set a mandatory target at 20% share of energy from renewable sources by 2020 (EU combined). In 2012 the Danish government adopted a plan to increase the share of electricity production from wind to 50% by 2020, and to 84% in 2035; this was later changed to a broader 100% renewable electricity by 2030 target.

Denmark’s electrical grid is connected by transmission lines to other European countries, and had (according to the World Economic Forum) the best energy security in the EU in 2013 although this had fallen to third in the EU by 2014.