Umeå Energi are working towards a goal, that in the year of 2018, they will be completely climate neutral. As a part of this, one target is to reduce their grid losses by 4 % of the 2012 level, which corresponds to an overall reduction of the grid losses of just over 1.7 GWh. In many residential areas, the distribution grid is designed and rated for electric heating as the heating in the houses. As many of the houses later has been converted to other types of heating, their electricity use has decreased and the total power output from many of the secondary substations has decreased significantly. Because of this, many of these stations today are well oversized, which in turn means that the energy losses in these stations are unnecessarily high.In this degree project, 25 secondary substations have been studied, all located in residential areas in and around central Umeå.

This report will show the energy usage of Hotel Princess in Sandviken, Sweden. When the hotel changed owner an examination of the hotels heating, ventilation and sanitary systems were done. The report showed flaws in the ventilation system, and is why the new owner wanted a closer look at the energy use of the hotel. The original building was built in the 1930s and two major extensions have been built, one in the 1950s and the most recent in the 1980s. An assumption made is that the building parts were built to the restrictions during the time. Activities on the hotel include sleep over, conference, night club, massage and swimming in the hotels pool section.

Calculated and measured energy in residential buildings is going to differ. The reason to this may be due to many factors. In this study there is a study on how these factors affect the energy use in a building. To get an insight in what defines energy, there is first a description of energy supply both worldwide and used in Sweden, followed by a description of the energy balance. In this study energy will be studied in residential buildings only.

Metan är en stark växthusgas som är viktig att ta med i beräkningarna när det gäller klimatförändringar. Feedback från myrmarker vid en ökad temperatur i samband med klimatförändringar har diskuterats, bland annat eftersom myrmarker är en källa för metan till atmosfären. Det finns många faktorer som påverkar metanemission, och en av dom är vegetation. Olika sorts vegetation tros bidra olika mycket till avgivningen av metan. Syftet med denna studie var att undersöka hur stor betydelse det har att ta med olika växtsamhällens sammansättning i beräkningarna för att uppnå korrekta uppskattningar av metanemission från myrmark på ekosystemnivå.

Food insecurity is a great problem worldwide and Ethiopia is one of the sub-saharan countries that are suffering from poverty and food insecurity and a large part of the population are living in a state of undernourishment. To reduce these problems, a successful horticulture production can be an important factor. Compared to other crops, fruit production in Ethiopia has not been a large part of the agricultural sector. However, the demand on the domestic market is increasing as well as the production for avocado and mango. To increase food security it is important to focus on ways to decrease post-harvest losses of food products and not only have the productivity of agriculture in focus.

Phytoremediation is a technique using the ability of plants to absorb pollutants in their biomass from contaminated soils and remediate it. The plants are then harvested and the soil gets purified. This method is more environmental-friendly than the normally used methods for soil remediation. Glasriket in Småland is an area with large amount of pollutants including arsenic, cadmium and lead. This area must be cleaned from these metals because of the high threat to the environment ant the health of people who live here.

Phosphorus is essential to all plants and is taken up from the soil as the ion H2PO4 - (and to some extent HPO42-). Plant availability depends on, among other factors, the soil pH. In order to provide for plant available phosphorus, it is applied as mineral fertilizers and farmyard manure. However, that causes phosphorus leaching from arable land to surrounding surface waters and lakes and contributes to the eutrofication. There are three types of soils in Sweden that are at higher risk of contributing to phosphorus leakage.

Background to problem: Pensions play a big role in people's lives when life expectancy continues to increase. Companies can choose different ways of reporting their pension plans, and within the defined benefit pension plan poses the actuarial gains and losses that can be reported based on three different methods. Only one method will exist from 2013, how will the companies that use the other two handle the new situation?Purpose: Investigate why different companies have chosen to report its actuarial gains and losses along the corridor approach, directly against income or directly in equity. How will the companies that use the corridor method manage the situation when it will only be allowed to report in other comprehensive income as of 2013 and how will this affect them.Methodology: Data was collected through qualitative questionnaires sent to companies listed on Nasdaq OMX Nordic Stockholm, Large Cap and Mid Cap, and a qualitative interview.

The purpose of this study has been to evaluate whether a Low temperature bio-mass dryer could be integrated with the local district heating system in Malå. The aim is to increase the thermal efficiency of the cogeneration plant in Malå, by lowering the temperature of the cooling medium. Another benefit that comes from this is improved combustion efficiency at the power plant, since drying the fuel causes an Increase of the heating value.Simulations has been made in Excel, and with use of linear regression, to find out if it is profitable. Data for this purpose has been supplied by the power company Skellefteåkraft and furthermore SMHI.The result of the Calculations shows that a very efficient bio-mass dryer is needed, if yield of investments should be made possible. An Investment of 4,27 Mkr, in a dryer, could at a such criterium return 60000 kr/year, if the price of the biomass is 190kr/MWh.

The Swedish boreal forests are limited by nitrogen (N) availability. While biological N2 fixation by cyanobacteria hosted by pleurocarpous feather mosses are important sources of N input to natural boreal forest ecosystems, little is known about the patterns of N2 fixation in silvicultural systems. This study investigates the biological N2 fixation rates of two boreal feather moss species (Pleurozium schreberi and Hylocomium splendens) along a chronosequence from clear-cut to mature forest, as well as the vegetation characteristics along the chronosequence. Measurements and samples were collected from 32 forest sites that were classified into four age classes (clear-cut, pre-commercially thinned, thinned and mature forest). The sites were located near the city of Arvidsjaur in northern Sweden.

Acidification is a central concept in the environmental debate. The effect of acidification of the soil is a matter of a decreasing amount of cations and thereby a decreasing ability to resist a supply of hydrogen ions to the soil. Acidification has gradually increased in the O horizon in Västerbotten over a 30-year period from the 1970th to the 1990th. The aim of this study was from inventories of The Swedish National Forest Soil Survey and The Swedish National Forest Inventory explain and quantify the acidification that has occurred in the O horizon of two regions in the north of Sweden. Data from SMHI, The Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute, has also been used.

To make it easier for forestry planning the forest owners needs data which describe characteristics of the forest. Such data you usually get from some type of inventory. A relatively new technology which probably is getting more important in the future, is laser scanning because of lower costs. But because the laser technology is relatively new you need to compare it with conventional inventory technologies to get better understanding of the possibilities the laser technology gives. This work intends to estimate field measured characteristics of the forest from laser data with help of regression analysis and then see which of the field measured properties that best could be estimated and which laser variables that gave the best results. This study shows that heights has the best estimates, but biomass, diameter and volume also gives good estimates.

Ethiopia is a developing country situated on Africa?s horn. Ethiopia ranks 173rd on United Nations human development index where the least developed country ranks 186. About 85% of all Ethiopians are employed in agriculture. Onion is one of the basic ingredients in the Ethiopian cuisine and thus an important crop.

The goal of the society to increase the proportion of renewable energy has led to an increased demand of bioenergy e.g. forest biomass. However, there are concerns that removal of biomass will lead to decreased base cation concentrations in the soils and acidification of streams. In order to find in which types of landscape removal of branches and tops could have such negative effects, this study aims to analyse the relations between pH-sensitivity and landscape variables in the Bothnia Bay water district. GIS and digital geographical data were used to analyse the landscape in subcatchments.

The aim of this study was to quantify the productivity and the costs of different harvesting systems (teams), containing harvesters equipped with accumulating harvester heads and forwarders, in first commercial thinnings were an integrated harvest of pulpwood and energy wood were performed. In the beginning the plan was to study and measure 20 sites before and after harvest. Due to storms during the summer of 2010, complete data could only be obtained from 8 of these 20 sites. Seven of these sites were privately owned and one was owned by UPM, all of the sites had been pre-commercially thinned. The mean stem density before harvest was 2578 stems per ha and the mean stem volume was 0.074 m3solid over bark.On average 1518 stems/ha was harvested.