Decision making for sustainable natural resource management under political constraints – the case of revising hydropower licenses in Norwegian watercourses

ABSTRACT

Norway is the largest hydropower producer in Europe and provides currently 96% of domestic electricity supplies. Hydropower is a renewable and climate friendly source of energy, but causes an impairment on local environmental conditions, recreational use and aesthetics in and along impacted watercourses and lakes. Around 70% of the larger Norwegian watercourses and half of the country`s total water-covered areas are regulated for hydropower production. By 2022, up to 430 hydropower licences will come up for revisions to implement the European Water Framework Directive in Norway. These have considerable potential to increase environmental and aesthetic conditions in Norwegian watercourses. We examine the decision-making of five completed licence revisions by means of document analyses of all relevant written sources, showing the content, methods and procedural qualities of the revision process. Despite case-specific differences, there are significant commonalities which form the basis for recommendations. Multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) can be used to improve the documentation of physical impacts and value judgements in hydropower decision-making processes. We analyse the perception of main interest groups with regards to the use of MCDA in future revisions. There exists a rather strong resistance to using MCDA due to a variety of political and regulatory reasons.

KEYWORDS:

• Hydropower
• integrated water resource management
• environmental conditions of watercourses
• recreational and aesthetic interests
• qualitative social research
• multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA)

Acknowledgements

CEDREN is the Norwegian Research Centre for the Design of Renewable Energy (https://www.cedren.no/). SusWater is one of its projects and deals with the topic of sustainable governance of rivers with hydropower production (duration 2015–2018). This study was conducted as part of SusWater`s work package 4 with the objective to analyse how the decision-making methods and processes could be improved.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Øystein Aas http://orcid.org/0000-0003-0688-4049

Notes

1 The revision interval was reduced to 30 years for licenses granted after a change in law in 1992 (Falkanger and Haagensen 2002).

2 In Norway, the MoPE prepares a final evaluation for the government, based on the recommendation of NVE, the views of other ministries and local authorities. The government then makes a final decision in the form of a royal decree (Regjeringen 2008). In practice, MoPEs final evaluation represents the final decision.

3 Standard terms can be given for a range of subjects (e.g. nature management; weirs/ramps; accessibility/transport; cultural heritage; pollution; clearing and marking of ice). They are not assessed as part of the actual licence revision assessment by NVE and MoPE but instead after the assignment of new terms by respective experts at the County Governor - the chief representative of the King and Government in the single Norwegian counties.

4 More detail on the knowledge base used in the revision assessments is given in Köhler, Ruud, and Aas (2019).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Norwegian Research Council [grant number 244050].