The prevailing food and energy crisis of the world, due to the declining reserves of fossil energy and a never ending rise of consumption, forces us to look into new fields to supply our energy demand. The boom of bio energy is criticized, as food crops are used to provide biodiesel and ethanol and the volumes are ridiculously small to supply world demand. Algae are one of the world?s oldest life forms and exist in many different phyla, providing a great variety to choose from, for different purposes. Cultivating microalgae offer a way to produce energy at great volumes without competing with food production and at the same time the algae offer a way to use our expensive nutrients in a more efficient way, besides this the algae are carbon dioxide neutral since their carbon source can be supplied by the atmosphere and the additional energy required can be supplied by algal oil or other renewable sources.

All new households were to be constructed with "near zero energy house standards" (NZE-house) by the year of 2020. The ambition to construct energy-efficient buildings had to increase rapidly in the spring of 2013.The purpose of this report was to increase the interest for building contractors to construct apartment buildings with passive house standards. By locating and evaluating experiences from an existing passive house a case study including interviews, field visits and document analysis was made. Research of literature regarding other passive houses in Sweden also helped to answer the following questions:- What positive and negative experiences have the study of the passive house meant to the involved stakeholders and residents?- What improvements can be made based on identified experiences?- How can an apartment building be designed as a passive house based on possible improvements?By collecting good and bad experiences, as well as improvements and potential design proposals, a diagram was created designed as a tool for developers when constructing apartment buildings with passive house standards.

Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion, OTEC, is a sustainable energy conversion technology that is not yet commercialized. OTEC is a technology that utilizes the temperature difference in oceans between the warm surface water and the cold water at 1 000 m depth to run a Rankine Cycle. This technology can produce electricity and provide synergies like fresh water, air conditioning and aquaculture. A simulation program for three alternative OTEC systems has been created in order to decide which OTEC system is most profitable; closed, open or hybrid system. In this simulation a production cost analysis is performed in order to investigate and decide which one of the three systems that has the lowest production cost. The production cost analysis also analyzes if the profitability is affected by the size of the facility. After these analyzes, the most profitable of the three different OTEC-systems is expanded by an installation of solar collectors in order to see if the thermal efficiency is improved. The result shows that the most profitable system varies with the size of the facility.

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.

This bachelor thesis aims at investigate how a specified house can optimize its energy consumption.Today the house often stands for the major part of the energy consumption in a consumers? life,whereas an energy optimization creates economic as well as environmental advantages. It is importantto make old houses more energy efficient, but putting high energy demands on new houses could beargued to be more important. The installations functions as both the heart and brain in a house, thusmaking it important to energy optimize these. Since the background describes the importance ofenergy efficiency and optimization in a house, the focus area of this report will be an investigation ofdifferent types of heating systems in order to be able to choose the one most suited for the house.Aspects considered when choosing the heating system was how economic the system is both inservice- and investment costs and how environmental and operational friendly the system is.Through literature reviews there were sufficient information gathered that served as a foundation whencomparing and choosing between the four systems - district heating, pellet-fired boiler, geothermalheating and solar heating.

The examination has been performed at Bjerking AB, which is an architectural and engineering company. Bjerking AB has the ambition to be a member of Green Building.The Green Building program developed in year 2005 by The European Commission, the program is an environmental system with the aim to improving energy efficiency within the sectors of non-residential buildings. The minimum requirements to participate the program are following: in new-built buildings the calculated energy consumption must be 25 % lower than the requirements in the BBR (Building regulations) and in refurbishment the reduction must be 25 % lower than before the optimization.The aim of this study has been to examine and review the company Bjerking AB's energy efficiency work in the project of building the school/kindergarten S:ta Maria Alsike, where the goal is to get this building Green Building classed. A description of requirements to become a member of the Green Building has also accomplished in the thesis.The methods performed in this study are literature review, searches on the Internet, studies on the project database for facts/values, calculation of energy consumption and interviews of members of the Green Building. The following issues have been dealt with in the report;-          Did the building in the project manage the requirement to achieve an   energy consumption that is 25% lower than the requirements in BBR?-          What technical measures/system was selected in the building?-          What kind of cooperation was the project based on?-          What is required for consultancy companies and real estate owners to become members of the Green Building?The study of the project and calculation of estimated energy consumption in the building, give the result 47 kWh/m2, year.

There's no doubt today that mankind has contributed to the changing climate byher use of fossil fuels. This must change in the nearby future. The Europeanleaders are expressing concern that renewable energy sources are not beingused to their full potential. The 2001/77/EC Directive on Electricity Productionfrom Renewable Energy Sources was accepted in 2001 to encourage thedevelopment of energy production from renewable sources, which isconsidered a step towards the fulfillment of the goal of the Union, that 12% ofthe gross energy consumption should come from renewable energy sources bythe year 2010.The objective of this thesis is to illuminate the common legislation of the EUregarding renewable energy with regard to goal fulfillment, judicial quality,conflicts with other goals of the EU and other faults. The objective is reachedby a hermeneutic study in which interpretation of written text is the mainmethod.

This thesis has been carried out at the Department of Urban and Rural Development at SLU Ultuna during the spring semester 2009. The topic of the paper is how energy consumption can be influenced through design and if the conditions for good design decreases when solutions based on energy efficiency are used. The report is divided into one literature study and one part where energy efficient solutions are used in a design. The thesis work has its origin in a project called "Energihus i Uppsala." The planned building will be a center for energy research in Uppsala. The project aims to demonstrate to the public what is currently happening in research related to energy.

According to a decision of the European Commission, measures are to be taken to reduce the use of energy in the EU. The goal is to reduce it by 20 % compared to the current use. This shall be done to the year 2020 (European Commission, 2011). One industry that use large amounts of energy is the construction of buildings which account for almost a third of the energy use (Brogren, 2012). The major part of the energy that is used in the construction industry is not used when the buildings are built, but rather during the rest of their subsequent lifetime.

Geothermal energy can be extracted from an aquifer, where the groundwater is used as heatexchange medium while heat and cold are stored in the surrounding material in the aquiferand to some extent in the groundwater. Application of aquifer storage for the use ofgeothermal energy is mainly used in large scale facilities and is limited to sites with suitableaquifers in the form of ridges, sandstone and limestone aquifers.Löwenströmska hospital in the municipality of Upplands Väsby, north of Stockholm, islocated nearby the northern part of the Stockholm esker. This means that it can be profitableand environmentally beneficial for the hospital to examine the possibilities of aquifer storagein the esker material next to its property.The purpose of this master thesis has been to investigate if geothermal energy storage with aseasonal storage of heat and cold can be applied within Löwenströmska hospital?s propertyarea using groundwater modeling. A hydraulic groundwater model was constructed inMODFLOW based on a simplified conceptual model of the groundwater system.

Allmänheten har en stor efterfrågan av produkter inom området för hemautomation. Den senaste bluetoothstandarden Bluetooth Low Energy skapar nya möjligheter för intressanta produkter som underlättar vardagen. Lösningar som IR och Wi-Fi ger inte de förutsättningar som krävs för att på ett energisnålt och praktiskt sätt erbjuda sådana produkter, något som Bluetooth Low Energy gör. I denna rapport diskuteras standarden i syfte att redogöra för hur den kan användas för att automatisera ett hem.För detta examensarbete implementerades en strömbrytarprototyp och en iOS-applikation, vilka användes för att unders öka och påvisa ett koncept för hur tekniken kan tillämpas för hemautomation. Resultaten visar att teknikens räckvidd är dess främsta begränsning.

In today?s fast growing and closely connected society, a reliable and energy efficient transportation system is more than ever desirable. Nowadays the significant part of the transportation sector?s energy demand is supplied by fossil fuels.Improving energy efficiency in combustion engines will result in reduction of fuel consumption and CO2 emissions. A modern internal combustion engine has an efficiency of 30-45 %, where the most energy loss occurs as result of heat losses in the exhaust and cooling systems.

An increased awareness about the global warming has created a demand for more information on how the climate is affected by different activities.This master thesis was initiated by Tricorona, a Swedish company that offers its customers analysis and calculation of their climate impact. Tricorona also supplies climate neutralisation with CERs, in accordance with the Kyoto protocol and controlled by the UN. This work demands updated emission factors for greenhouse gases. An emission factor gives information about the greenhouse gasintensity of a service or a product [kg CO2-eq./ functional unit].The purpose of this thesis is to examine how electricity, district heating, hotels, taxis, food and materials affect the climate and how emission factors for these areas can be calculated.This was done by reviewing and comparing different studies and by interviewing experts. The information was evaluated and recommendations on calculations and emission factors were made.The consumption of energy is the main source of greenhouse gas emissions for district heating, electricity, hotels, taxis and materials.

As demand for renewable energy is increasing rapidly, the market for biomass pellets is expected to continue to grow in the near future. Most of the new raw materials that are discussed for pellet production have one thing in common; the production costs will increase compared to using traditional raw materials such as sawdust and planer shavings. The aim of this thesis is to investigate to what degree increased use of new raw materials for pellet production will affect the general pellet prices in Sweden and to survey what plans Swedish pellet producers have concerning new raw materials. To investigate the raw material situation of the Swedish pellet producers an industry survey was performed. Literature studies were also made on previous research in the subject field. Calculations of the production costs for pellets were done for the raw materials sawdust, wet sawmill chips and energy wood respectively. New raw materials are already used by the large-scale pellet producers in Sweden.

Skärgårdsstiftelsen, which is responsible for several of the archipelago islands in Stockholm, has chosen to explore the possibilities for more sustainable heating systems in buildings on the islands in collaboration with KTH. A reduction of energy use and improving the efficiency of existing heating systems are included as part of the environmental work. This report studies the island of Grinda, which is located outside the area of Vaxholm in Stockholm. The study area consists of a guesthouse consisting of a restaurant as well as conference facilities and four neighboring cottages used for overnighting. The cottages now run solely on direct electricity, both for heating and hot water.