In light of the circumstances due to Covid-19 and stricter meeting restrictions, the supervisory board of the Sustainability Project has decided to postpone the annual meeting, which was planned for April 27, until the autumn. A new date will be announced later.

Landsvirkjun, Alcoa Fjarðaál, and Austurbrú have agreed that Austurbrú will provide ongoing consulting services, maintenance and development of the Sustainability Project for the next four years or until 2024.

Alcoa Fjarðaál and Landsvirkjun established the sustainability project in 2004 to monitor the impact of the construction of the Kárahnjúkar power plant and the smelter in Reyðarfjörður on society, the environment, and the economy in East Iceland.

Austurbrú's role is, according to a renewed agreement, to work with the project's supervisory board on any presentation, data collection, data processing, meeting preparation, organization and maintenance and operation of the project's website as well as other incidental tasks that the supervisory board entrusts a consultant to work on.

New project website

In the year 2020, a lot of work was done to update the project's website. To begin with, the indexing of indicators was reshuffled, and their numbering changed to make the layout of the page more targeted and make it easier for users to find information on it. On May 29, the new website went live at https://www.sjalfbaerni.is in Icelandic. Then in December, the English part of the site went live at https://www.sustainability.is. The introduction of a new site reflects the development that has taken place in information technology and the presentation of content in recent years.

Basis for research

Initially, a consultation group, composed of representatives of the community, defined which issues were most important in terms of people's concerns and expectations in connection with the project and formulated proposals for references. As a result, the indicators are 63 with 78 measurements, and they are classified into social indicators, environmental indicators, economic indicators, and company indicators. Measurements of these indicators have now been going on for 14 years.

The Sustainability Project's database is growing year by year, and its usefulness is steadily increasing. Various opportunities for analysis and interpretation lie in the database. In addition to shedding light on developments in East Iceland, the results could be used in various ways, e.g., for analysis and research on social development, in the development of ideas and procedures for projects related to corporate social responsibility, and much more.

Usefulness for the contemporary

Alcoa Fjarðaál and Landsvirkjun are fully committed to continuing the Sustainability Project in the coming years, and it is the ambition of all involved to ensure that the basic principles on which the project was based in the beginning are maintained and at the same time that it develops and is useful for the present at any given time.

Austurbrú has been in charge of the project since 2013, and it is accessible to everyone on its new website www.sjalfbaerni.is.