About Bellona

The Bellona Foundation was founded in 1986. Our main office is in Oslo, and we also have international offices in Brussels (Belgium / EU), Berlin (Germany).

Our area of expertise is broad, and our staff is comprised of individuals with various professional backgrounds. With decades of experience, we have established a unique network both nationally and internationally. Our work has gained international attention within several disciplines, and Bellona’s advisors are frequently sources and experts on climate change issues both in national and international press.

What we are working with?

Who we are working with?

In principle, anyone. Pollution knows no borders, thus Bellona is working with and against anyone and everyone relevant to our work, both nationally and internationally. This can be anyone from politicians, bureaucrats within ministries and agencies, decision-makers in business, media, other non-profit organizations and foundations, to participants in research and education.

Bellona has a solution-oriented approach to the environmental challenges and we have since 1998 had extensive cooperation with a number of companies in different industries and businesses. Our approach is that to achieve results one must jointly work out the best social and environmental solutions, and making these financially profitable/ viable.

Thus the partners we aim to work with in our partnership programs are companies that are strategically placed in relation to (Norwegian) industries. The partners can be as much a part of the solution as the problem, but are important allies in political processes; they have the necessary expertise and knowledge in their field, and commonly share the willingness to position themselves as pioneers that identifies and demonstrates new solutions.

However, Bellona is and has always been an independent watch dog that investigates/ scrutinises and reports any kind of environmental crime we might uncover.

Find more information about the different funders, within the Bellona offices’ information profiles.

Bellona Oslo

Bellona Oslo HQ
Bellona’s headquarters is located in central Oslo. Represented among the 40 employees are a wide variation of professional disciplines, from nuclear physicists, to engineers, biologists, criminologists, economists, political scientists, lawyers, advisers and journalists―a multifaceted consortium of individuals that enables us to address the challenges we face when it comes to environment and climate change from different angles. After “digging for barrels of toxic waste” for several years, the Bellona Foundation turned its focus to larger projects with an emphasis on finding realistic and manageable solutions to the environmental, resource, transport and energy problems in the world today. Every year since the foundation in 1986, Bellona has become more technology and solution oriented with our main focuses in the areas of renewable energy, transport, shipping, building technologies, as well as a broad range of climate friendly technologies such as carbon capture and storage. The Oslo office is where the general and long-term strategy of the entire Bellona organisation is developed.

Go to bellona.no »

Bellona Europa

Bellona Europa
As one of the world's biggest political and economic powers, the EU is an important arena to create a better world for future generations. The EU's environmental legislation is also highly relevant for Norway, through the EEA. Bellona has been established with an office in Brussels since 1994, the same year Norway voted 'No' in the referendum on EU membership. Bellona seeks to influence the processes in the EU so that the outcome is beneficial to both the people and the environment. Bellona Europa works primarily on  industrial decarbonisation, energy systems, circularity, sustainable finance, and negative emissions (carbon dioxide removal). To back and support our work, our funders are mainly European and International philantropies: CIFF (Children’s investment fund), ECF (European Climate Foundation) and Climateworks.  We also receive grants at the EU level (EU Horizon 2020 project, “European Negative Emissions Projects” ) and at the national level (Norwegian, Nordic & EEA grants for research).

Bellona Deutschland

Berlin
Bellona Deutschland, based in Berlin, was founded in 2021 as a non-profit limited liability company (gGmbH) and is largely financed by donations from private foundations. The team in Berlin is mainly concerned with climate protection in industry, because Germany, as the strongest European industrial nation, is particularly important in this area. It is Bellona's concern that zero emissions are achieved as quickly as possible and negative emissions are made possible, if necessary by exceeding the legally binding European and German climate protection goals. Bellona's work in Germany focuses primarily on the effective use of renewable energy, hydrogen, circular economy and the capture and permanent geological storage of CO2. In this context, Bellona believes that new infrastructure needs to be set up.

Go to Bellona Berlin web pages »

Bellona Environmental Transparency Center

The Bellona Environmental Transparency Center, based in Vilnius, is an investigative group within the Bellona Foundation that operates as an independent non-profit solution-oriented environmental NGO. Our team monitors and analyzes Russia’s environmental impact within and across borders with a special focus on nuclear and radiation safety and security, climate change and industrial pollution. Since 1989, Bellona has documented and exposed grave environmental conditions within the then-Soviet Union, and later within Russia. For 28 years from 1994 to 2022, Bellona maintained offices in Murmansk and St. Petersburg working towards securing large quantities of nuclear waste from the Russian nuclear industry and military, protecting the environmental rights of the population and producing science-based information for a wide-ranging public. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022 impelled Bellona to cease its operations in Russia, shutting down both its offices and relocating its personnel and expertise to a new office in Vilnius that opened in 2023. Bellona’s experts are closely following events in Ukraine, producing articles and working papers in both English and Russian. We also offer a subscription to our monthly Bellona Nuclear Digest with regular updates on important issues in the field of nuclear and radiation security relative to Ukraine and Russia, as well as the influence of Russia’s nuclear industry on other countries.

Subscribe the the Monthly Nuclear Digest »