Biodiversity-energy nexus: Pressures, impacts and potential for hydropower development in protected watercourses

The energy transition required to address climate challenges will demand a major shift towards renewable energy. At the same time, Norway has committed to halting biodiversity loss through the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework. These two goals are in conflict. Particularly sensitive are proposals to change the status of natural areas that currently have some form of protected status. Suggestions to consider new hydropower development in protected rivers, therefore, generate controversy. However, this debate has a limited basis in established knowledge. Partly because the energy potential of various alternatives is unknown, cumulative effects on biodiversity are not understood, and the pros and cons for other river users are unclear. Today, protected rivers are often safeguarded from hydropower development to preserve representative examples of Norwegian river ecosystems. However, these rivers are not necessarily protected from other interventions, meaning that the conservation values in some rivers may have significantly changed. This project aims to develop a toolbox for evaluating the potential consequences of new hydropower in protected rivers. This will be done by creating scenarios that enable an assessment of the impact of new hydropower production in protected rivers along three axes: (i) energy production, (ii) effects on biodiversity, and (iii) the advantages and disadvantages for other user interests. The project will not take a position for or against development. The main goal is to shift the debate about hydropower development in protected rivers from one focused on disagreement on the knowledge base, to a discussion about prioritizing different societal goals.

Society is en route to fail delivering both on targets for energy transitions necessary to meet climate change challenges and on commitments to stop loss of biological diversity as laid out in the The Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework. While there are seemingly insurmountable challenges around conflicts between development of renewable energy sources and biodiversity conservation, the potential of some of the most land use-effective sources of renewable energy, hydropower, remain understudied. In particular, the question of considering hydropower development in Norway's protected watercourses has generated a rather toxic public discourse, characterised by personal opinions and a lack of facts. We propose a project aimed at shifting this discourse towards a debate about priorities between different environmental and societal goals. The project will develop the necessary toolbox to evaluate potential impacts of new hydropower development in protected watercourses. This means enabling scenarios that will plot the impact of new hydropower production in protected watercourses in an impact space along three axes: (i) energy output (ii) impacts on biodiversity (iii) impacts and benefits for other user interests Overall, this project aims to provide a comprehensive and data-driven approach to evaluating the potential impacts of hydropower development on biodiversity and societal interests, promoting informed decision-making and transparency in the process. This will be addressed both at a local level as well as include issues related to the energy-biodiversity nexus at a national scale.