The Smart Grid technology has during the last decade been established as a way to create a greater flexibility on the electricity grid that will be needed as the development moves towards an increased share of renewable primary energy sources in the electricity production. One part of the Smart Grid technology is the ability to shift loads in time, to adapt to either price or emissions, known as Demand Response. This project, which was conducted at KTH in collaboration with the consulting corporation Capgemini, examines the economic, environmental and social aspects of the Demand Response technology. In the project, three household products are used in a model that derives the potential savings in costs and emissions of CO2e. The results show that the actual savings measured in SEK are small, but that the savings measured in percent can be as high as 20 percent. Reduction of CO2e emissions is slightly lower.

The Smart Grid technology has during the last decade been established as a way to create a greater flexibility on the electricity grid that will be needed as the development moves towards an increased share of renewable primary energy sources in the electricity production. One part of the Smart Grid technology is the ability to shift loads in time, to adapt to either price or emissions, known as Demand Response. This project, which was conducted at KTH in collaboration with the consulting corporation Capgemini, examines the economic, environmental and social aspects of the Demand Response technology. In the project, three household products are used in a model that derives the potential savings in costs and emissions of CO2e. The results show that the actual savings measured in SEK are small, but that the savings measured in percent can be as high as 20 percent. Reduction of CO2e emissions is slightly lower.

In the near future we need to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions significantly for the benefit of the environment around us. The European Union has de-manded a variety of climate and energy goals to be achieved by year 2020, the ?20-20-20? targets. With these aims, The European Union means that we must reduce our emissions from fossil fuels and instead increase our renewable fuels. With stump harvest in the forest it?s possible to increase the use of renewable fuels and reduce our emissions from fossil fuels.

The European Union is a self proclaimed leader in the field of climate change and has a common target for reductions of greenhouse gas emissions. In spite of this, there are great differences between the member states capacity and dedication to the cause of implementing the Unions climate policy and reduce their emissions. The purpose of this thesis is to contribute to an understanding of how different European states construct their identity in the context of climate change mitigation. By analyzing national documents from three European states and using tools deriving from discourse analysis, I aim to illuminate differences and similarities in their rhetoric. The result is that due to the states relationship to the European Union and the United Nations, there are great similarities in the way they construct mitigation and their identity.

Rapid economic development and urbanization has led to an improved standard of living for the Chinese people. Meanwhile, a series of environmental problems have also appeared and smog, in particular, has caused the Chinese people to realize how serious the situation is. Smog has seriously affected normal economic activities and people's everyday lives, resulting in financial losses, increased mortality and disease. How to handle the smog becomes particularly important. The purpose of this study is to describe and discuss the underlying causes of two sources of pollution, particulate matter and sulfur dioxide, as well as what drives individuals' and firms' environmentally destructive behavior.

One problem in today?s indoor air quality lies within insufficient ventilation. Dynamic ventilation can be obtained by implementing a Demand-Controlled ventilation (DCV) system. DCV systems adjust the ventilation in a building by calculating the impact made by its? occupants.

This thesis examines the emissions costs of Swedish aviation and their degree of internalisation under current economic instruments. The results show that the degree of internalisation spans from practically zero for a long-haul flight to 6 per cent for a typical domestic flight, where the climate cost, including high-altitude impact, makes up the main part of the cost. To inform evaluation of the consequences of this underinternalisation, or attempts to correct for it using price instruments, the price and income elasticities of international leisure air travel from Sweden are estimated using household expenditure data and two different price measures. The resulting elasticities are very high ? 2.03 or 2.04 for the income elasticity and -2.53 or -1.88 for the price elasticity ? and should be interpreted cautiously due to data limitations, especially for the price elasticities.

Smallholder farmers in Uganda suffer from declining productivity. With a rapidly increasing population, marginal land is taken into production and the current land management leads to loss in soil fertility and escalation in soil erosion. There are studies indicating that the use of agroforestry increases soil organic carbon (SOC) compared to systems without trees. Soils which are high in carbon have many advantages, for example better water holding capacity, which can reduce stress on crops during drought. The aim of this study was to determine the effect agroforestry has on SOC concentration in small-holder farming systems in Uganda. The intended system to study was farms practicing agroforestry methods or not in intercropped plantain (cooking banana) fields.

This study concerns the energy future of the county of Stockholm up until 2050 and describes how the energy consumption can be compared to today with the use of scenario methodology. Within energy future studies the backcasting approach is well known and has been put to use in this study. Due to the characteristics of backcasting the study is self-fulfilling, i.e. the future energy scenarios presented in this study satisfy the targets set up in this study. In the light of what may be the largest challenge of our time ? the climate change - the aim of this study is to describe how the energy consumption in a fossil fuel free Stockholm county in the year of 2050 may be.

Abstract The global average temperature has increased by 0,74°C over the last 100 years. Most probably, the explanation is due to increasing use of fossil fuels and the agricultural expansion of land use. The new life stile of mankind leads to increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Food consumption contributes with approximately a quarter of the total greenhouse gas emission per person and year, why it is an important task to reduce these. The aim of this work is to quantify energy use and greenhouse gas emissions for (Swedish) herbs produced in Swedish greenhouses. The study is based on a LCA (Life Cycle Assessment) and collected data from participating companies producing herbs in pots.

With the expansion onto the international market almost a decade ago, Swedish energy corporation Vattenfall began it's breaking and burning of coal on German soil. Criticism aimed at Vattenfall peaked in the mid 2000s with the revelation of large quantities of carbon dioxide emissions and the re-location of villages and graveyards in German states Brandenburg and Saxony. The purpose of this thesis is to show where the responsibility for these activities lie. By analyzing the history of, and the political debate surrounding, Vattenfall, I will show that the prevailing policies of right- as well as left-wing parties in the 20th century were all, regarding this matter, market oriented. I will also show that these market promoting policies made possible a situation where the transparancy of, and state control over, Vattenfall were close to eliminated.

A patient simulator for testing anaesthesia machines has been developed at Maquet Critical Care AB, to reduce costly and time-consuming experiments on animals. The device simulates human lungs regarding lung dynamics and volume, uptake of anaesthetic agents and the production of carbon dioxide, heat and moisture. Further demands on the simulator are durability and size; the device shall be compact enough to be moveable.The resulting simulator fulfils the requirements and enables better repeatability and ability to test extreme cases than experiments on animals do.Uptake of the anaesthetic agent is achieved in a active carbon filter and controlled by regulating the flow. The flow is created by a regenerative blower and controlled using a proportional valve. The uptake can be set by the user or by a simple uptake model modified to recursively handle changes in the concentration of anaesthetic agent.Carbon dioxide is fed into the system from a tank by a mass flow regulator.

With increasing energy prices and increased focus on the environment we saw the need for companies to get control over their energy use and their emission of carbon dioxid. An analysis tool that integrates both these areas is, with our knowledge, not available on the market today. Therefore, our project became to develop such a tool.By doing this degree project we would like to clarify that energy consumption and environmental impact are integrated. The less energy consumed by today?s society the smaller the environmental impact will be.

To achieve the goal of fossil independency in the Swedish vehicle fleet in 2030, it would be important to substantially increase the proportion of electric vehicles, both BEV:s (Battery Electric Vehicles) and PHEV:s (Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicles). The Swedish Energy Agency has funded numerous research and development projects about electric vehicles in recent years. An important task for the Swedish Energy Agency is to allocate state funds to those projects with the greatest potential to contribute to increased establishment of electric vehicles in society. The purpose of this work is mainly to understand the efforts and measures that can make the market for electric vehicles to grow. The report can contribute to a better understanding of how far the research on electric vehicles has come and what has to be done in the future to promote the establishment of electric vehicles. Another aim for this report is that it should serve as a basis for future decisions by the Swedish Energy Agency on which projects that will be funded with state funds.

In Sweden the work of reducing acidification and its prime cause; emission and deposition of sulphur dioxide, has been going on for decades. Despite of all the work that has been done the positive progress in the acidified areas is slow. This is partly due to a long recovery time for the acidified areas but also because the reductions of emission and deposition of sulphur dioxide have not been large enough. Emissions of sulphur dioxide from land based source in Sweden are estimated to 34 000 tons in the year of 2010. During the same year, approximately 182 000 tons of sulphur dioxide will be deposited over the Swedish territory.