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Biodiversity
Biodiversity is a priority area in Statkraft’s sustainability strategy. Statkraft’s activities affect biodiversity through land and water use, and the strategy aims to reduce these impacts while supporting renewable energy development and addressing climate change.
Why it matters
Global biodiversity is in decline, mainly driven by habitat loss and climate change. This creates risks for societies and economies worldwide. The Global Biodiversity Framework sets out a plan to halt and reverse biodiversity loss by 2030, and to put nature on a path to recovery by 2050. These goals are important for long-term wellbeing and sustainable development.
For Statkraft, biodiversity is directly affected by project development and existing assets through land and water use. At the same time, climate change is also a major threat to biodiversity. Protecting nature and addressing climate change are closely linked challenges and need to be considered together.
Environmental management and biodiversity have been part of renewable energy development for many decades and are integrated into our project development and asset management.
Our approach follows the mitigation hierarchy: first avoid negative impacts, then reduce and restore, and, where needed, offset. Particular attention is given to species and habitats that are especially vulnerable.
Species, land- and water-use
Statkraft’s activities can affect biodiversity through land and water use. This happens when projects require land areas, water resources or changes to existing environments. To reduce these impacts, biodiversity is integrated early in project screening, design and investment decisions. The approach follows the mitigation hierarchy: impacts are first avoided where possible, then reduced or minimised, and, where needed, restored or offset.
Impacts can also affect individual species. Statkraft therefore identifies species that are particularly vulnerable to renewable energy activities. Measures are then applied to reduce risk, such as habitat‑sensitive site planning and actions that help maintain key ecological functions and movement routes.
Our targets
Natural World Heritage Sites
- Statkraft will not plan new energy developments in existing natural World Heritage Sites
Biodiversity management and net gain
- By 2028, streamline approach for documentation of biodiversity measures in projects and assets to improve performance management and drive best practice developments.
- From 2028, Biodiversity accountancy for new developments* with significant land- and/or water-use change to improve performance management and drive best practice developments**.
- From 2030, Statkraft defines net gain commitments for select parts of the portfolio.
* New developments not yet taken Principal Investment Decision
** Significant land- and/or water-use is triggered if the new development is required by law to have an EIA or ESIA
Songa, Norway
Songa, Norway
How we work to meet our targets
Statkraft works within licensing and permitting processes that aim to balance biodiversity considerations with renewable energy generation. These processes require impacts to be identified, reduced and managed as part of project design, construction and operation.
Building on this, we are working to improve how biodiversity impacts and measures are understood and documented. This includes improving documentation, introducing biodiversity accounting to enable comparison across projects, and developing more systematic ways to assess opportunities for net gain in selected parts of the portfolio.
This work is carried out through testing and learning in selected projects and assets, combined with sharing experience across business areas and countries. Statkraft also develops overviews of mitigation measures, takes part in research to strengthen biodiversity knowledge, and contributes to industry work on common methods for measuring biodiversity impacts and actions.