All around the world more and more people move from rural areas to live in the cities. Because of this, the urban areas have become an important part in the debate about the effects on the environment and sustainability. In many countries word wide initiatives have been taken to build sustainable cities and eco cities, the Stockholm Royal Seaport is one example. The vision for the district is to become a world class sustainable city based on the three dimensions of sustainable development: social, economic and ecologic. The municipality of Stockholm has set requirements for the buildings? energy usage, emissions and amount of waste generated during the building process.

With a larger awareness of the climate changes and increasing electricity prices, energy efficiency measures in the industry have become more common. By rationalize the activity and by the same time decrease the emission of greenhouse gases the company can both save money and reduce negative environmental impact. For the Swedish industries the electricity price have traditional been relative low, which has resulted in a considerable larger usage than other European countries. By a deregulation of the European electricity market the electricity price will level off between the countries, which will cause a higher electricity price in Sweden than we are use to. To prevent that the Swedish industry don?t lose competitiveness against the other European countries, it will require energy efficiency activities in all different forms.ABB Sweden has decided to decrease their total energy usage with five percent in two years.

Sustainability work is something that is emphasized more and more. Corporate Social Responsibility, CSR, is discussed and the question of how much responsibility companies should really take is frequently in the news. Companies tend to ask themselves how much responsibility they should take. CSR is a common concept of companies environmental and social work and a concept we tend to see here and there in our modern society. CSR includes companies? social responsibilities, both in terms of carbon footprint, working conditions, social responsibility and more.

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to examine how venture capitalists implement ESG issues internally, as well as before the investment decision and during the investment period.Theoretical framework: The theoretical framework consists of previous studies that identify different driving forces behind the work of the ESG and present a number of different strategies for implementing ESG issues in the investment process.Method: This study aims at providing an understanding of a phenomenon which implies an inductive approach. This thesis applies a qualitative method of data collection in the form of semi-structured interviews. The sample in this study consists of venture capital companies that were members of the SVCA (Swedish Venture Capital Association) during the time of the survey, 2015.Result: The empirical findings in this thesis consist of a presentation of the data that was generated from eleven interviews conducted with eleven different investors in the venture capital sector.Conclusion: This study indicates a lack of written policies regarding internal work with ESG-issues which were offset by the application of the "unwritten" policies. Implementation of ESG-issues during the pre-investment phase was dominated by an avoidance of investments in sectors which lead to a negative impact on society. During the post-investment phase ESG-issues was integrated by monitoring the portfolio companies' operations.

Along with rising energy prices and increasing awareness of environmental issues, the criteria for buildings energy performance have been sharpened through the years. Today, ?passive house? and ?low energy house? are commonly used phrases in the construction industry and is expected to become increasingly common in the future.For houses with well-insulated building envelope the importance of well constructed details increases when minimizing the heat losses. Examples of these details are floor-wall junction and window openings in the wall. In such connections thermal bridges occur, which means that heat more easily is transported out of the building, compared to the rest of the building envelope.This report deals with detail solutions around windows and a comparison between a traditional slab and a foundation from Koljern consisting of foam glass.

When constructing a building, a number of aspects must be harmonized in order for it to fulfill requirements ? a building must fulfill requirements such a load-bearing, conservation of energy and a good indoor environment by means of, among other things, moisture proofing .Moisture problems in buildings can affect health negatively. As we are increasingly staying in indoors, demands on a good indoor environment are higher.This work starts with examining moisture problems in slab-on-ground solutions, and then links the various scenarios to moisture problems in a concrete slab of a real building. The building with moisture problems is located in Årby by in Borlänge and moisture damage was found in the slab at an apartment adjoining wall.By reviewing literature written within the field of moisture problem, making hand calculations and modeling in the program Comsol Multiphysics, judgments are made to find explanations as to why the rise of moisture occurred in the building in Årby by.Generally, the following guidelines may be used to reduce the risk of moisture problems in slab-on-ground constructions:Drying of construction moisture before laying the floor material.Using draining layer beneath the slab, to prevent capillary suction.Using insulation under the slab, partly for comfort and to establish the temperature difference between the ground and the concrete slab.Avoid direct contact between the wood and concrete, due to degradation and fouling smells that normally occurs.If necessary, use additional vapor barrier.In addition to the above, there are various methods for moisture-proof and moisture-monitoring by design or by the method ByggaF suited for the entire construction process various events..

Climate and environmental issues is now high on the agenda. We live in a generation that must try to solve some major environmental problems. Buildings and habitations account for approximately 40 % of Sweden's total energy today. To reduce this figure, as needed, more research in the field of energy efficiency is required.This thesis concerns the heating of buildings. The load on district heating is heavy during certain times of the day.

In today's society there is a significant focus on energy efficiency. Despite this, people leave lamps, televisions and computer screens etc. powered on unnecessarily. The goal of this project is to build a simple prototype for home automation where a user, via an application on a mobile phone, can switch on and off the power of an electrical products in the home and as well as being able to check whether such products are switched on or off. The prototype will also collect data on power consumption for these electrical products.

The demand for environmental assessments on buildings and energy consumption is increasing as well as the energy performance requirements for buildings. At the same time it is increasingly common with self-producers of heat and electricity generation.The main purpose with this master thesis is to investigate how time resolution affects the environmental assessment of energy consumption in office buildings connected to district heating (DH). Environmental assessments were done with both attributional LCA and consequential LCA with system expansion.Fortum´s DH system in Stockholm was analyzed and district heating production was simulated in a Matlab-model. Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions for the production were calculated. The heat demand of the office Gångaren 16 in Stockholm was simulated in IDA ICE.

Cost allocation ? a study of how Swedish energy companies allocate costs between electricity and district heating in a combined heat and power plant District heating is today the most utilized alternative for heating in Sweden. In a combined heat and power plant (CHP) electricity and heat are cogenerated. The environmental and economic advantages with this kind of production are high. A problem in a CHP-plant is to allocate costs between electricity and heat since both products are generated in the same process.

This project investigated the current market regarding wireless net and the communication between the tools used for diagnostics/maintenance and an embedded system. Based on documentation obtained through interviews a demo system was created based on Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) communication between an embedded system and an Android device.This report intends to describe the tools and methods used in the design of the demo system and the result of an analysis of the BLE communication.Bluetooth Low Energy is an exciting protocol with wide applicability within the industrial field. This project investigated the communicational possibilities between a Smartphone and a Raspberry Pi and based on the results that emerged the conclusion can be drawn that BLE is a protocol with many beneficial applications within industrial IT..

The Swedish pulp and paper industry meets higher demand for energy efficiencyi mprovements with increasing energy prices and changes in the Swedish renewable energy certificate system. One action of energy efficiency improvement is by using secondary heat, that otherwise would have been treated as waste heat, for use in a system with lower temperature demands. The aim of this Master´s thesis is to identify possible secondary heat sources in a typical Swedish pulp and paper mill and to investigate what economic benefits the secondary heat will provide when being used for pre heating of wood chips to a kraft digester.The Master´s thesis focuses on three secondary heat sources; dry warm air, warm water and moisture saturated warm air located inside the pulp or paper mill. Two types of kraft digesters are simulated within this study, a typical Scandinavian digester and a modern twin vessel steam phase digester.Due to quality aspects and low temperature level drying is the drying technology with dry warm air rejected. Using warm water in direct contact with wood chips increases the quantity of water to the evaporation plant and thus reduced pulp or paper production and is therefore also rejected.

In the production of pulp, paper and cardboard, a large amount of water is used daily. The water has to be purified in the internal purifying plant before it reaches the receiving body of water. In the biological purifying stage at the Stora Enso Skoghall mill, an aerated basin is used where the microorganisms, using oxygen, oxidize the organic material to carbon dioxide. The air is pumped from the bottom of the basin and the oxygen can then be transported from the air bubbles to the water through diffusion. The problem with aeration of waste water from the forest industry is that wood residues, such as fatty acids, are making the transport of oxygen in water more difficult.

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.

The power consumption has grown rapidlyin the last decade. Fossil fuels and theneed for alternative energy sources aregreat. Ocean waves are a renewable andsustainable source of energy that hasbeen relatively untapped. At UppsalaUniversity research and development havebeen done for several years. Severaltypes of wave energy converters (WEC)have been created.