Norway’s state broadcaster (NRK) claims during prime-time broadcasting that Norway is obliged to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. That is incorrect. The Paris Agreement is not a legally binding agreement with enforcement mechanisms or sanctions.

Even though NRK has proclaimed its climate journalism with the ambition that it will “tell climate stories of world-class quality”, it will not issue a correction. Even when this is pointed out in writing to the presenters and the NRK journalist who made the statement, no correction is forthcoming.

During NRK Nyhetsmorgen on Thursday 4 June, there was a segment on Norway’s greenhouse gas emissions and climate targets. The background was that the Norwegian Environment Agency had published a status report on last year’s emissions earlier that same day. It showed that emissions in 2025 amounted to 44.1 million tonnes, a decline of 1.2 per cent from the previous year.

In the NRK studio were presenters Marte Kaasa Arntsen and Bjørne Østrem Djukastein. Their guest in the studio was their colleague, NRK journalist Kristine Ramberg Aasen.

The latter is part of the state broadcaster’s investment in “climate journalism”. It states that “NRK shall tell climate stories of world-class quality for the audience”. On Thursday morning, that audience was gathered around NRK’s news broadcast, at kitchen tables, in cars, or on public transport.

The NRK trio problematised the fact that emissions reductions are progressing far too slowly to achieve the climate targets for 2030 and 2050.

A climate falsehood from NRK

“Norway has submitted its climate targets to the UN, and because we are part of the Paris Agreement, we are obliged to reduce emissions,” Ramberg Aasen stated to her NRK colleagues.

NRK journalist Kristin Ramberg Aasen provided misinformation on NRK Nyhetsmorgen on 4 June. Screenshot: NRK.

But here Ramberg Aasen is mistaken, something she ought to know given that she mainly covers climate-related issues. Her colleagues, presenters Kaasa Arntsen and Østrem Djukastein, neither corrected her nor asked for clarification. Consequently, Ramberg Aasen’s statement remained standing as a kind of truth that the audience carried with them on their way to work or other activities that day.

If what Ramberg Aasen delivered was a climate story of world-class quality, it may have been a climate falsehood, because the Paris Agreement is not a legally binding agreement. Some will admittedly claim that it is, but it is not. The agreement is based on the voluntary nationally determined contributions submitted by individual countries. No country or authority can determine what another country’s climate targets should be.

The Paris Agreement contains no sanctions against countries that fail to meet their own declared climate targets. A good example is that there are no sanctions against the United States, which has rejected the Paris Agreement.

The Paris Agreement is based on voluntariness

The Paris Agreement is a political agreement. When the political composition changes, the basis of the agreement changes accordingly. One might describe it as a statement of intent in which the parties are not bound, but are free to withdraw from the agreement without sanctions. The entire arrangement is based on voluntariness. There may, however, be a degree of peer pressure at various climate conferences, and politicians may be constrained by previous statements and decisions. But there is nothing that binds the nation as such.

Therefore, the reality is the exact opposite of how it was presented on NRK Nyhetsmorgen.

Document contacted NRK regarding the matter and was asked to send an email, which we did. We sent an email to the presenters and the journalist with the following questions:

1. On what basis was that statement made?
2. To whom is Norway obliged?
3. Why did the presenters not correct the statement or ask for clarification?

Document has received no reply.

Presenter Marte Kaasa Arntsen would neither issue a correction nor request clarification. Screenshot: NRK.

Støre with the world’s most aggressive climate targets

What is correct is that Norway has the world’s most aggressive climate targets. They entail Norway reducing its greenhouse gas emissions by 55 per cent from 1990 levels by 2030. This is the same target as that adopted by the EU. Nevertheless, the Norwegian version of this percentage target is far more aggressive than the one applied by the EU.

This is because Norway and the EU had vastly different starting points in 1990. Whereas EU electricity generation at that time consisted of 37 per cent coal-fired power and 8 per cent oil-fired power, Norwegian electricity generation was emissions-free, apart from local gas-fired generation on the continental shelf, produced precisely in order to channel Norwegian gas to the continent.

Today, EU electricity generation consists of only 11 per cent coal-fired power and 2 per cent oil-fired power. This reduction would not have been possible without gas from Norway.

When gas replaces coal or oil as an input for electricity generation, emissions per kilowatt-hour of electricity produced are halved. Norway has therefore played a key role in reducing greenhouse gas emissions in both the EU and the United Kingdom. Today, the EU produces more than twice as much gas-fired power as in 1990, and the United Kingdom more than seventeen times as much. Thanks to gas from Norway.

The climate targets that have been further tightened under the Støre Government, and which command a majority in the Storting, are unattainable compared with the EU’s targets, even though they are identical in percentage terms. Achieving them would require draconian measures that would damage the Norwegian economy, and which no one is yet willing to debate.

Put simply: Had Norway possessed a few coal-fired power stations in 1990 that we could have closed down along the way, things would have been easier.

NRK, with its mandate, its annual budget of NOK 7.75 billion, and its 3,200 employees, is tasked with illuminating important issues, but fails to do so in this case.