Due to global climate change and the rising levels of greenhouse gases (GHG) in the atmosphere, the interest for seeking solutions for mitigation has increased. While much attention has been directed towards technical solutions such as carbon capture and storage (CCS), biogenic carbon sinks has also garnered significant attention. Previous studies have shown that coastal ecosystems such as seagrass meadows and mangroves have a much greater capacity for storing carbon (C) compared to terrestrial ecosystems. That raises the question if other coastal ecosystems, such as coastal wetland forests, that previously haven?t been considered as blue carbon habitats also contribute to coastal carbon sink capacity.

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.

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).

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 purpose of this report is to simplify the process of designing carbon fiber strengthening for existing concrete constructions, specifically beams. The intention has been to establish a flow chart containing information on the necessary testing and calculations for the design, to as far degree it is possible satisfy the requirements stipulated by Swedish and by extension, European authorities.To do this the report will examine a parking garage situated underground by Akademiska Sjukhuset, Uppsala. The parking garage was built in the mid-seventies, and has in recent years been subjected to a greater load than designed for by the construction of a road on top of it. FEM-Design has been used to obtain the internalforces of the beams and thereby determine whether they are in need of strengthening or not and thereafter design the strengthening according to Täljsten (2006) with some corrections from Täljsten (2011) due to new regulations.The result of this report is that the flow chart used is viable to design carbon fiber strengthening, atleast with the conditions met in our reference project.The conclusion drawn after working with this report is that there is a need for a clear standard for carbon fiber strengthening , preferably a standard that can be used throughout Europe..

Long transport of products is an environmental issue discussed to an increasing extent. The consumers are increasingly aware of how far our comestibles really have been transported. The increasing levels of environmental emissions are something that concerns people. The question is nevertheless delicate and many choose to ignore it. This is no longer an option.

A titania-supported nickel catalyst was prepared and tested in methanation in order to evaluate its catalytic properties (activity, selectivity and specially, activity loss), and compare it with an alumina-supported nickel catalyst.The titania-supported catalyst did not only show higher stability than alumina, but also presented a different cause of deactivation, carbon formation. In addition, a kinetic model was obtained for the titania-supported catalyst, and a study of the effect of different operating conditions (temperature, composition and partial pressures of synthesis gas and water) on the deactivation rate and carbon formation of this catalyst was performed.

This literature study concerned the use and function of the radioactive isotope carbon-14, as a dating method of organic material, within the scientific field of physical geography. In this report it is presented the need of atmospheric calibration curves and the development of these as a necessity to translate carbon-14 years to calibrated calendar years. A number of common age-depth models that is used to give an approximation of an accumulation sequence and its related dates over the actual time period in different natural archives is presented and discussed. Different problems that commonly occur when age-depth models are utilized as for instance reservoir effects, contaminations or other age deviations are addressed and analyzed. The software CLAM in presented and discussed and was also used to produce age-depth models.

The environment has become an important part in people´s lives, and in today´s society stakeholders demands have increased upon companies when it comes to sustainability reports. How these sustainability reports are designed depends on whom it?s for, laws and regulations, and the companies own norms and values. The purpose of sustainability reports is to measure, monitor and compare a company´s enviromental impact. It?s not only about integrating economics, but also enviromental and social standards together to get both financial and competitive advantages.Sustainable Value method is a new model and is the first real method that can be used to evaluate a company´s resources, both financial, social and enviromental to a sustainable value.This model is used to compare the resource efficiency between companies.In this thesis, a documentary study with an experimental approach has been made.Sustainability reports from six selected companies (in the engineering and forestry sector) have been investigated with respect to their accounting for carbon dioxide, and an experiment using the method ?Sustainable Value Approach? was subsequently performed.

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.

Since the 19th century the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere hasincreased by 40 percent as an effect of the use of fossil energy sources.Increased concentration of CO2 will likely lead to increased temperature,changes in precipitation, rising sea level and increased frequency of extremeweather like storm events. A step to reduce emissions of CO2 and mitigateclimate change, for the property of Tagel, can be to adopt new silviculturalstrategies and analyse which is the most effective. As a result of that, threescenarios was produced, business-as-usual (BAU), increased set aside landand energy. An introduction of windpower at Tagels estate (property) andeffects on carbon balance was also examined. By using the Heureka systemand LCA-analysis in this study, it showed that the scenario of increased setaside land was the most efficient way to reduce carbon dioxide (CO2)emissions for the analysed period of 100 years.

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.

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.