This thesis includes an energy survey of the Herrgården pre-school, which has a modern heating- and ventilation system, and a comparison with Östers pre-school which has an older system. An energy survey of Östers pre-school has already been done by a group of three students and all the calculations and values have been collected from that survey. As of today, both pre-schools are heated thru district heating. It will be much easier to make smart and feasible energy-saving-measures by first conducting the energy survey.Herrgården pre-school in Gävle houses 81 children, therteen teachers, one cleaner and one cook. It was finished in the middle of 2009 and the staff has been very pleased with the in-door climate.

To build a sustainable future should we first understand that; every aspect of our daily lives can affect the environment. It?s important that we take responsibility for understanding how we impact the environment and change our actions accordingly. The worlds total energy consumption equivalent to 80 million MWh / year. This corresponds to about 220 million MWh / day.Energy consumption is one of the main reasons for increased greenhouse gases when the reduction of this consumption has a great demand worldwide.In order to prevent the energy that consumed the buildings must be energy efficient but there is a conflict between radon ventilation and energy conservation in a building, given that ventilation can consume as much energy (currently 29-59% of energy-efficient houses use), especially in a cold climate as in Norway.

The purpose of this study was to implement an energy analysis and environmental evaluation of the property Hemsta 12:16 in Gävle. Based on two different methods, Energy Balance calculation and Environmental Building, the result of the property's energy use, energy performance and environmental impacts are presented. Except that, measures to reduce final energy consumption are presented.      The proposed measures can reduce energy usage by 100 400 kWh / year, which represents a decrease of 18% of the present energy usage. This would represent a total savings of 63 000 SEK per year. In addition, the environmental performance is improved by adopting the suggested measures..

Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion (OTEC) is a technology that utilizes the temperaturedifference in oceans between the warm surface water and the cold water at 1000 m depthto produce electricity. The purpose of this report is to investigate if OTEC with its synergiescould become a commercially feasible energy solution for a small island. A literature reviewis conducted to explore the different OTEC technologies and to what extent the threesynergies; fresh water, air conditioning and aquaculture, could be used. In order to calculatethe profitability of these synergies there is also a study conducted on the conventionalmethods and cost of fresh water production, aquaculture and air conditioning. A model is setup using a scenario of a small tropical Island with population of 100 000 people.

With increased deployment ofintermittent renewable energy, such aswind and solar power, energy storagebecomes necessary to help reduceproduction peaks. Thermoelectric EnergyStorage is a method still in researchphase, which stores electricity in hotwater at a temperature of 120 ° C. Thisthesis aims to examine whether theThermoelectric Energy Storage would bepossible to integrate into existingpower generation such as a combined heatand power plant, and how the technologypotentially could function in theelectricity market. ThermoelectricEnergy Storage consists of a chargingprocess and a discharging process, bothoperating by the working fluid CO2. Toincrease the efficiency of theThermoelectric Energy Storage, wasteheat from the district heating networkis integrated.A model of the Thermoelectric EnergyStorage has been developed and it wascalculated by thermodynamic propertiesof the working fluid, CO2, in thevarious process steps.

Passive houses are a relatively new concept in Sweden and by that it is meant a house without a traditional heating system. The most acknowledged passive house project is the terrace houses in Lindås, Gothenburg, which we have used as a reference. This project concerns a square apartment block. So far, no square apartment block has been built as a passive house in Sweden.The common opinion in the construction industry is that it is not economical to build extremely energy efficient houses. With Peab as commissioner our task was to investigate if that is true, if regarding the construction of a multi storey house as a passive houseMidroc, now owned by Peab, constructed in the block of Preussen in Jönköping during 2004-2005 four houses, with 132 apartments distributed on seven floors.

The question of excessive global energy use needs to be solved. All energy production and usage have negative environmental impacts, which are best solved by reducing energy consumption and by using energy more efficiently. A large part of the Swedish energy use is concentrated to the building sector and to reduce the total energy consumption real efforts need to be made to make buildings more energy efficient.The aim of this study was to investigate how energy is used in one of Göteborg University?s buildings and to find measures that can be taken to improve its energy efficiency. The chosen building Zoologen, is used for research and education.The main method of the study is computer simulations of the present building and of possible energy reducing measures to be made in the future.

Streams and riparian zone are closely linked by reciprocal flows of energy and nutrients. A large part of the transportation from water to land is in form of emerged aquatic insects. Conversion of land from forest to agriculture can greatly affect aquatic ecosystems, and due to the close link, also affect the adjacent terrestral zone. Investigating how the presence of agriculture in the surrounding area affects amounts of emergent aquatic insects gives an indication on how agriculture, in turn, may affect the terrestral enviroment. The study was preformed alongside ten streams in northern Sweden; five in landscape transformed by agriculture and five in undisturbed forest areas.

Abstract In order to make the modern agriculture less dependent on non-renewable external inputs, it has to rely more on ecosystem services. The agricultural system produce not only food, fiber and fuel, it also generates other ecosystem services such as e.g. photosynthesis, recycling of nutrients, influencing local microclimate, pollination, biological control and detoxification of noxious chemicals. This study is an attempt to get a better understanding about the interaction among different ecosystem services and different habitats capacity to generate them. An evaluation of eight different methods is done. The ecosystem services studied are the ability to absorb solar energy, biomass production, botanical diversity, decomposition and natural predation of aphids.

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.

The construction industry has demands on energy use in permanent buildings. How much energy that is permitted to use during the time the building is produced has no requirements. The purpose with this study is to learn how far Skanska has come with the work of making the building site more energy efficient.A literature study has been performed in the beginning of the study to survey what energy efficient arrangements that can be applied and how they operate. Using site visits and interviews the situations on the building sites have been studied as well as the energy efficient measure that are in use.Skanska has come a long way with the work of energy efficient building sites and they keep improving. They have improved half of their cabins so they use 50 % less energy.

Sweden adopted a new anti-discrimination legislation 2009, DiskL, which aim to prevent direct and indirect discrimination in matters of employment and occupation.According to directives and practices from EU, pregnant workers are entitled a special protection from discrimination during employment situations. The purpose of this essay is to study the legal protection for pregnant workers in employment situations and also analyze whether male workers have similar protection when they plan parental leave. Both regulations from the EU-law and the Swedish law are presented and discussed. This because Swedish discrimination legislation is largely influenced by the EU-law.The study confirms that pregnant workers have a strong legal protection against discrimination through directives from the EU and DiskL. Employers must include this protection in employment situations.

In this report the two authors, and project contributors alike, describe their work withdeveloping a solar cooker intended for usage in the developing countries of the world.Specifically, the work aims at developing a new, solar heat driven cooking device, possiblybased upon the current product. This should, in comparison to the current product, be lighter,easier to transport and to produce. Also, the new product?s production mustn?t be more costlythan today and the included materials and components must be obtainable from within theBolivian national borders where the product is currently produced. During the project, certainadvantages with a more efficient, and, above all, a more moderately priced product, werediscovered.

This thesis looks at the difference between the legal protection in law and the legal protection in reality when a small company working with international trade comes in contact with seller's breach of contract. The thesis uses a case taken from a company with over 30 years experience trading with China and looks at the legal protection available along with the different possibilities of dispute resolution available to a company and then looks at the reasons why this legal protection never becomes a reality and the thesis also analyses some possible reasons for this gap between law in the books and law in reality..

The purpose of this thesis was to investigate whether accounting quality is a priced factor by investors. The event studied is the release of year-end result and the release of the annual report. To assess accounting quality a sample of 30 companies listed on the Stockholm Stock Exchange during 2003 to 2007 are studied. We assess accounting quality by the absolute size of discretionary accruals using the modified Jones model developed by Dechow et al. (1995).