Material IRO description:

1. Natural resources exploitation and land-use and freshwater-use change from mining. Negative impact (upstream value chain).
2. Ecotoxicity from mining. Negative impact (upstream value chain).
3. Land-use and sea-use change from coal and gas extraction. Negative impact (upstream value chain).

How do we manage the IRO?

1. We have completed a mapping to help us understand potential negative impacts on biodiversity that we may have in our value chain. We continue to explore ways to identify and mitigate impacts across our value chain, including our first attempt at mapping impacts from high impact commodities (HICs) in our upstream value chain.
2. We have completed a mapping to help us understand potential negative impacts on biodiversity that we may have in our value chain. We continue to explore ways to identify and mitigate impacts across our value chain, including our first attempt at mapping impacts from high impact commodities (HICs) in our upstream value chain.
3. We are working towards managing our biodiversity-related negative impacts in our value chain. In 2024, we closed our last coal-fired CHP plant, eliminating the impact from coal from 2025.

We have completed an assessment of all our operational assets in collaboration with The Biodiversity Consultancy, using their Biodiversity Risk Screening Kit (BRISK). This assessment focused on biodiversity- and ecosystem-related impacts, risks, dependencies, and opportunities at an asset level, helping us to better understand which sites are material in this respect. It takes a variety of factors into account that indicate impacts on biodiversity on a scale ranging from low over medium to high. These factors include species, designated areas (including protected areas and key biodiversity areas (KBAs)), ecoregion intactness, water pollution, and marine habitats, amongst others. The assessment highlights a list of matters, indicating that there are potential negative impacts on biodiversity if nothing is done to avoid or mitigate these. From that output, we have found that the majority of the identified risks have already been identified through our EIA or equivalent processes as well as mitigated as a part of our biodiversity action plans. Therefore, we are taking all necessary steps to limit risks and negative impacts on biodiversity and ecosystems at all our site locations. When we identify overlaps with e.g. an IUCN Red-listed species, an action plan is developed to ensure that we do no significant harm to this species, nor any threatened species, both during construction and the operational phase.