The world is in a stage of climate crisis where the average temperature is rising, with consequences such as, melting ice sheets, increasing sea levels, and floods. The climate panel of the UN, IPCC, has stated that this is a reaction of anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases. The most important gas is carbon dioxide, which contributes with 80 per cent to the on going climate crisis.The increasing emissions of carbon dioxide are connected to human consumption patterns. This puts pressure on the earth, as humans demand more and more resources. Today the earth needs one and a half year to regenerate the resources humans? demand of it, by the year 2030 we will need two planets in order to cope with this increasing demand of resources.At a global level it is established that richer countries have a stronger consumption pattern than poorer, and thus generate higher levels of carbon dioxide emissions.

Human existence and welfare depend on functional ecosystems. Ecosystems are critical to sustain life-support services for human well-being. One method that visualizes that humanity requires ecosystem services for resource consumption and assimilation of produced waste is ecological footprints. This study focuses on the ecosystem service carbon sequestering. A quantification of this ecosystem service showed the potential for accumulation of carbon in different ecosystems in Stockholm and Norrbotten County for the years of 1995 and 2004.

Abstract This degree project examines how much carbon dioxide that emits during the construction phase of a road project. This is to make it possible to compare how the amount of carbon dioxide differentiates between traditional road construction and Swepave construction, which is PEAB?s alternative way to design roads. To make the comparison a calculation tool has been produced. To compare the amount of carbon dioxide emissions a reference project was needed.

The importance of energy- and environmental issues has increased, and the work towards reducing carbon dioxide emissions plays a major part. The European Union has set up goals for the membership countries to work towards this to happen. The carbon dioxide emissions in Sweden have been reduced the last few years, but there is still a lot to do. About 30 per cent of Sweden?s carbon dioxide emissions generate from energy usage related to housing, this is why the housing sector is of interest to examine.

The background of this work is the media discussion about the effect of cultivation on peatsoils on greenhouse gas emissions. It has been argued that row sown and intensivelycultivated crops such as carrots are more likely to emit carbon dioxide than for example grassleys. The association KRAV (an association promoting organic farming) shall, from this yearadapt their environmental policy to be more climate smart and have asked the question if thecultivation of some crops is more climate smart than others? Carbon dioxide emissions fromsoil are due to degradation of organic material and the rate is controlled by microbial activity.The microbial activity is determined by a variety of factors such as temperature, soil organicmatter quality and water content. I have measured the carbon dioxide emission from fourdifferent crops at two different farms.

Agriculture has to be performed in a sustainable way in order to sustain high yields and to support a globally growing population. Functional soil properties are fundamental for high yields and in order to achieve good soil conditions sustainable management is a key. Loss of soil organic material and increased soil acidity are problems associated with degradation of soils and hence less sustainable agriculture. In this thesis, the effect of different agricultural systems on soil organic matter, pH and yield was examined. The systems examined are a cereal system with straw removal or returning and a ley system, all with different nitrogen levels.

In the light of new technology health care is now given the opportunity to form a more mobile way of working that would bring about potential gains in terms of efficiency and quality. On the other hand, a more mobile health care also requires a more generous handling of personal information, something that may raise issues in terms of privacy. This study shows that the privacy of the patient requires two things: (i) that the personal information of the patient is handled in a way that generates her an overall positive expected utility and that (ii) the negative expected utility that each risk of an information leakage causes is offset by the expected utility it also makes possible. The first requirement (i) is shown, in comparison with today?s way of working, to be met due to the potential gains in efficiency and quality in combination with no increase in the probability of informational leakage or negative effects of such a leakage. The second requirement (ii) was also considered met since no separate risks of information leakage could be identified that was not offset by the gains it made possible in terms of expected utility..

På senare år har en ny trend inom miljöarbetet uppstått. Istället för att bara vara miljövänliga tar vissa företag och organisationer det hela ett steg längre och klimatkompenserar för de utsläpp de har. Företag som klimatkompenserar hävdar att de gör allt de kan för att först och främst minska de direkta utsläpp som de förorsakar. Som en sista åtgärd, för att ytterligare minska företagets påverkan på miljön, kompenserar företagen för sina utsläpp genom att delta i något miljöfrämjande projekt. De bakomliggande motiven till att klimatkompensera är främst ett starkt miljöengagemang inom företaget sedan tidigare.

To curb greenhouse gases and mitigate climate change is one of the biggest challenges human society face today. Carbon dioxide (CO2) has accumulated rapidly in the atmosphere as a consequence of burning of fossil fuels and deforestation. The aim of this study is to explore two methods to store carbon dioxide in geological formations and biological sinks. The aim is also to discuss the two mitigation options from a sustainable perspective and whether it can lead to a better environment and benefits for local and global societies. The research questions are: Which method to store carbon dioxide, geological or biological, is the most effective? Which method to store carbon dioxide, geological or biological, has the greatest potential to promote sustainable development for local communities?The method used is a comparative case study and presents four case studies that explore the potential for CO2 storage offshore in Norway and Brazil; and in tropical forests in Mexico and Brazil.

In coastal wetlands carbon/organic matter can be stored for long periods of time thanks to, among other things, the presence of water which slows down the decomposition. Because of this, restauration and management of such habitats have the potential to decrease the emission of greenhouse gasses and help mitigate climate. Internationally these environments are called ?blue carbon? ecosystems. In Sweden, alder (Alnus glutinosa and Alnus incanata) covered wetlands along the coast is a nature type that potentially could function as a ?blue carbon? habitat.

The Swedish production of biogas was 1,5 TWh 2011. About half of the production was used as vehicle fuels. The cost for upgrading biogas depends on the size of the biogas plant and its gas production. If the gas flow is low the cost will be high. However, further development of existing upgrading technologies or development of new ones, have good potential to decrease the upgrading cost for small scale biogas plants.

Stora Enso är ett integrerat pappers-, paketerings- och skogsföretag som producerar finpapper, kartong samt träprodukter. Denna studie har genomförts på uppdrag av Stora Enso och utvärderar samt utreder existerande korrelationer mellan olika kvalitetsparametrar samt upplevd bildkvalitet. Det är oklart vad som påverkar den upplevda bildkvaliteten i störst utsträckning och Stora Enso ville därmed få ökad kunskap angående vilka kvalitetsparametrar som resulterar i ett gott tryckresultat. I och med digitalpressarnas utveckling introduceras papperskvaliteter med varierande egenskaper på marknaden och Stora Enso vill erhålla kunskap angående olika papperskvaliteters prestationer kvalitetsmässigt vid tryckning i olika tryckpressar. I denna studie baserades mätningarna och analyserna, tryck- och papperstekniska samt subjektiva, på elva olika papperskvaliteter tryckta i tre tryckpressar, DC2060, iGen3 samt offset.

With the climate change issues growing in importance on the social agenda, the field of urban masterplanning is of no exception when it comes to minimizing the carbon footprint in a variety of projects. The aim of this thesis has been to prepare the Carbon Critical Masterplanning tool, a software plugin for carbon dioxide emissions assessment developed by Atkins, to be used in Swedish conditions. The main targets were to improve the areas of the tool associated with energy conversion and renewable energy sources, and to test the tool in a real case. A planned construction of a new campus in Albano, Stockholm was chosen for the pilot study. A 3D model was built in the tool and the carbon footprint was calculated for a variety of combinations for energy supply to the future area. The results show that use of locally installed renewable energy sources can reduce the total climate impact when life cycle perspective is applied.

In order to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from human activities fossil fuels will have to be replaced with renewable energy alternatives, such as bioenergy. Sweden has a great potential to produce bioenergy derived from forest products and there is currently a great interest within Sweden in using stumps for bioenergy production. However, the environmental consequences of the method need to be investigated before stump removal can be performed on a large scale. Swedish forest soils contain large carbon pools and a different land use may change conditions so that soils that presently act as sinks of carbon could potentially turn into sources of carbon release instead. This study investigates the initial effects of stump harvesting on the emissions of three greenhouse gases, carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide. The emissions were measured from the soil surface in a Norway spruce forest located in the southern part of Sweden.

The decomposition of organic carbon in drained peat soils is a major source of carbon di-oxide in Sweden. A big part of these drained peat soils are used in agriculture and it is a big challenge to slow down their decomposition. It has earlier been thought that less tilling and higher water table levels would decrease the activity of soil microbes and thereby the decomposition, but recent experiments has showed that this has little or no effect. In this bachelor thesis a field experiment was made on drained peat soil with ley, outside Björklinge, Uppsala municipality, Sweden. The experiment was carried out in May 2011. The objective was to develop a method to examine how the net exchange of carbon diox-ide from plant covered peat soil is affected by temperature and photosynthetically active radiation (PAR).