The main reason why the large hydropower plants end up with large area use is the size of the reservoirs, which is assigned as ‘occupied land’. Related to this, it should be mentioned that the majority of the reservoirs in Norway are established in natural lakes (Hveding, 1992), sometimes with limited changes to the natural condition. Based on our data we can conclude that small-scale hydropower plants produce large volumes of energy in the light of the modest land occupation. If a large run-of-the-river hydropower plant (without reservoir) had been included in the analysis, this would most likely have achieved a ‘good score’ on this aspect as there are no large reservoirs connected to these types of hydropower plants.