A third party access to district heating networks has been proposed in Sweden, to increase the competition on the district heating market. Such third party access could create opportunities for the agricultural sector as an energy producer. This study describes the technical, economical and environmental prerequisites for a farmer cluster to build and run a heating plant, fueled with local wood fuel. The heating plant in the described scenario is 8 MW and will supply a village of 1000 houses, and is fueled with wood chips exclusively. Supplying a heating plant with fuel puts high demands on the logistics, since there need to be a continuous flow of fuel. In the scenario, wood residues from felling and thinning is stored in stacks in the forest, and a few times a year chipped and transported to a storage area at the heating plant. In the study, an estimation of the profitability has been made by estimating the cost of the investment, personnel, operating and maintenance costs and costs for the fuel and ash handling.

Finnhamn is a small group of islands in the Stockholm archipelago. At Stora Jolpan, the biggest island, there is a hostel. The main building was built in 1915 and is called Utsikten. The purpose of this project is to on behalf of the Archipelago Foundation (Skärgårdsstiftelsen) find alternative systems that can replace the existing heating system of Utsikten (an oil-fired boiler and electricity heaters) to a system with renewable energy. The alternative system that this project focuses on is a system of solar collectors combined with a wood chip boiler.

Mobility Management is about affecting and changing the demand of mobility. It?s not about what traditional planning?s been focused on; to supply for the demand. The demand of mobility is created by us humans since the traffic exists of us. That means that Mobility Management is about changing our needs.

The aim of this study is to clarify the Swedish government?s purpose of participating in theEuropean Union Emission Trading Scheme. Taking as its departure point state-centricinternational political economy this study presents three plausible hypotheses on what thepurpose might be. Either it is to promote consumers interests, or to promote the Swedishnational climate goal ?Reduced impact on climate?, or to promote the profit of Swedishcompanies.

The goal for this master thesis project has been to investigate the power quality in adistribution grid, which has a high fraction of dispersed power production due towindmills. The study has been done on a grid in Laholm South of Halmstad, whereapproximately 45 windmills are connected to the distribution grid owned by SHKEnergi. The investigation has been focused on to two radialy fed 20 kV lines, wheretwelve windmills are connected.Voltage variations have been studied by creating a model of the grid in the simulationprogram SIMPOW. The largest deviation that has been found in any point of the gridis ±1.9 % of the nominal voltage. This deviation is a result of varying powergeneration from the windmills and the voltage regulation at the connection point ofthe line.

The aim of this report was to quantify the accumulation of carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane (CH4) in ice-covered lakes in winter (October-March) during three consecutive years, and to assess whether the concentrations of DIC and CH4, as well as the ratio DIC:CH4 differs between years and between lakes affected by clearcutting and untreated reference lakes. Water- and gas samples were collected from four boreal lakes (two affected by clearcutting and two untreated reference lakes) located in Västerbottens inland in spring. The lakes were found to accumulate on average 91, 55, and 84 mgCm-2d-1 during winters 2012-2013, 2013-2014, and 2014-2015, mostly originating from CO2. The concentrations of DIC (autumn and spring) were higher in the affected clear-cut lakes compared to reference lakes for all years, including the reference year (2012-2013) before clear-cutting. No such difference was found for CH4 or the ratio DIC:CH4.

Discharge of inadequately treated waste water containing nutrients such as phosphorus and nitrogen as well as organic matter and bacteria is associated with a risk of eutrophication and contamination. The Swedish government has decided upon several Environmental Quality Objectives aiming to reduce the Emissions of nutrients to water bodies.In Sweden, there are between 675 000 to 1 000 000 on-site sewage systems. Recent studies have shown that the function of small sewage treatment plants is in many cases insufficient. To prevent this regular service and supervision by a professional is needed. The focus of this study are small sewage treatment plants which use a technique where mechanical, chemical and/or biological reduction of pollutants is being used in the same facility to reduce nutrients in household wastewater.The aim of the study is to investigate how different municipalities ensure that small sewage treatment plants fulfill the requirements and reduce pollutants as efficient as the manufacturers claim.

Urban density is not new, but rather one side of the continous processes of change underway in the city. During the urbanizing boom of the industrialization, when the cities grew bigger, the first spaces to be built on were vacant and planted areas in the interior of the district. The gardens that once were there were replaced by yardhouses. The idea of urban density is that a dense city means less distance between residential areas and workplaces, resulting in fewer shipments and travelers, which ultimately leads to lower energy consumption and lower Emissions. Urban density may lead to shorter distances, but not necessarily. In the wake of urban density the greenstructures of the city is shattered. The possibilities for green areas to contribute to the health of the city and its inhabitants is dramatically reduced.

Uppsala County has ambitious environmental aims for the planned residential area inÖstra Sala backe. In this thesis different energy sources have been evaluated todetermine which system that would be most favorable given currently availableinformation about the project. Planned energy usage has been divided into tap waterheating, space heating and power. Three base case scenarios were made with districtheating, small scale bio fuel and heat pump. Solar power and solar heating were thensimulated and the production from the two could individually be deducted from theenergy need in the base cases, constituting 9 different scenarios.

If one looks at physical planning in Sweden today one can see that while talking about densification of existing development, reduced Emissions and careful use of important land, urban sprawl is a fact with development of sheer residential districts in the urban edges and shopping malls in each and every municipality. As sustainable development is an essential goal for physical planning to strive towards, it is worth questioning if the direction of today?s planning will lead to the goal. A sustainable development can be seen as an obvious to goal aim at. In reality the aim means a hard and complex work.

The world is currently facing a huge severe challenge in handling the issue of climate change. One of the ways to lower the green house gas Emissions, which is seen as one of the main contributor to the climate crisis, is to use renewable technologies such as for example photovoltaic (PV) systems. PV-systems are also suitable for so called micro production, small scale energy production facilities, since it can be placed on practically any rooftop with the right solar conditions. In Sweden the usage of PV-systems has not yet gotten any wider spreading, even though the solar radiation conditions are very similar to countries that produce a lot of solar energy, as for example Germany. The aim of this paper is to describe non-adopter perceptions of PV-systems. The study holds a qualitative approach using deep interviews for data collection.

Coastal sediments are important carbon sinks, storing organic matter and thereby helping to reduce the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. However, they can also act as carbon sources if the deposited organic matter decomposes rapidly, contributing to increased greenhouse gas Emissions and global warming. Rapid decomposition partly depends on the degradability of the material itself. In this literature review, I examine which coastal plant species dominate different locations along the Swedish coast, based on coverage data from the ClimScape project (www.climscape.se). For the most dominant species, I investigated the type of organic matter they may contribute to the sediments and based on those results I qualitatively assessed which sites that may function as carbon sinks or sources.

All products will eventually end up as waste, which in a sustainable society has to be handled in an efficient and environment friendly way. This report focuses on waste fractions meant for combustion, often difficult to characterize. However, more homogeneous fractions that are treated biologically are also discussed.The study concerns the region of Borås, Sweden, where the waste plant Sobacken has provided a good starting point. On this site, fuel to the Energy-from-Waste plant of Borås Energi is prepared and the biological waste is treated through anaerobic digestion.One important part of the study has been to collect experience-based knowledge from the technical staff at Sobacken and Borås Energi. This information was compiled into an overview of wanted and unwanted fractions to the preparation plant and the boilers respectively.

Organic agriculture is financially promoted in Sweden by special environmental support and as consumers we are all encouraged to buy organic food. At the same time scholars at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences claim that organic farming does not provide any environmental benefits. The main criticism is that organic farming has lower yields than conventional, which means that more land is needed to produce the same amount of food as in conventional farming, leading to deforestation and loss of biodiversity. As for climate change, the critics claim that the significantly higher productivity in conventional crop production compared to organic, releases surplus land, which could be used for bio-fuel production and thereby replace the fossil fuels. The critics also claim that organic farming causes higher nutrient leaching than conventional.

If one looks at physical planning in Sweden today one can see that while talking about densification of existing development, reduced Emissions and careful use of important land, urban sprawl is a fact with development of sheer residential districts in the urban edges and shopping malls in each and every municipality. As sustainable development is an essential goal for physical planning to strive towards, it is worth questioning if the direction of today?s planning will lead to the goal. A sustainable development can be seen as an obvious to goal aim at. In reality the aim means a hard and complex work.