Energy efficiency is important both to reduce costs and to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the atmosphere. Reducing costs will also help maintain business competitiveness.Scania in Södertälje is a company where the optimization of energy use is an ongoing and continual process. One area with potential to make energy and cost savings is the effectiveness of the ventilation systems in offices and industrial premises at Scania. During the summer months an increased demand for cooling occurs, leading to increased ventilation and a peak in district cooling system usage. Sorptive cooling is a technology where the supplied air is cooled by applying external heat.

The company Sol & Energiteknik wanted to examine the possibility to make a standardhouse totally energy independent. Based upon this I have, during the spring of 2007,examined the possibilities available at the market today through litterature studies, contactwith several companies and reading reports at the internet.The first thing to examine has been to determine the energy consumption for a standardhouse, and find out if there are better technologies to be used for energy conservation.My conclusion in this matter is that there are possibilities today for building a house moreenergy efficient.When I had reached the point at which my design for the house was decided, I also hadto choose the different products to use to produce energy as well as to store that energy.To produce heat and electricity to the house I decided to use a wind turbine and a solarwater heater.The most difficult part of designing a house that is energy independent is that theproduced energy must be stored somehow. Storing the heat is relatively easy beacuse theheat can be stored in a large water tank. The electricity is a bigger problem beacuse itmust be stored in batteries, which today are too expensive to be used in a standard house.In the future producing and storing hydrogen might be used to produce electricity, buttoday that technology is both expensive and not tested enough.My final conclusion is that a standard house can not be built to be totally energyindependent today, unless it is very expensive to connect the house to the electricitynetwork. As an alternative solution I came up with a proposal for a house which isconnected to the electricity network and have some amount of own produced energy.This house prooved to be a good investment if you choose to build it today, and it couldbe a very good investment in the long run beacuse energy prices increase every year..

Environment and sustainable development are very current topics in today's society, bothnational and international. The government's bill 2004/05:150 ?Swedish environment objectives - a common commission? contains several environmental quality objectives, that in turn is divided up in smaller secondary objectives. One of the secondary objectives says: ?Latest year 2010 shall at least 35% of the food waste from households, restaurants, largescale kitchens and shops be recycled through biological treatment.

Hållbar utveckling har haft en växande inverkan på bygg- och fastighetsbranschen under de två senaste decennierna och en rad frivilliga miljöcertifieringssystem för byggnader har vuxit fram, däribland BREEAM och LEED, som idag är de två mest igenkända och internationella certifieringssystemen, samtidigt som allt fler länder bestämmer sig för att ansluta sig till denna gröna rörelse och utvecklar egna, nationella miljöcertifieringssystem för byggnader. Att bygga grönt och kunna verifiera detta med en certifieringsstämpel är idag en betydande och synlig aspekt, men fortfarande är det bara en sida av en mycket bredare strategi för hållbara affärer som sträcker sig in i företagets strategi och ledarskap, integrerad förvaltning och rapportering samt företagens miljöanpassning.Många nyckelaktörer i dessa branscher söker alltmer erkännande för sina hållbarhetsmeriter och har börjat utforska kopplingarna mellan hållbarhet och värde. I detta syfte använder allt fler bygg- och fastighetsbolag, investerare och företag så kallade gröna byggnader eller miljöcertifieringssystem för att placera sina byggnader isär från resten. Ett företag som idag väljer att utveckla, äga eller hyra en miljöcertifierad byggnad kommer att behöva fatta beslut om vilket system är att föredra ? ett lokalt certifieringssystem, som är mer anpassat till de nationella förhållandena, eller ett internationellt.Aktörerna på den svenska bygg- och fastighetsmarknaden har agerat försiktigt, trots sitt utvecklade miljöarbete, när det gäller tillämpningen av miljöcertifieringssystemen, vilket gör att Sverige just nu ligger efter i antalet certifierade byggnader, och därmed tillgången till den kvantitativa databasen över dessa som skulle kunna bidra till en närmare undersökning av värdekopplingarna.Vi kan inte påstå att de barriärer, som anses hålla tillbaka spridningen av miljöcertifieringssystemen i Sverige, i form av bland annat ovilja att betala högre produktionskostnader vid tillämpningen av dessa, är borta idag, men vi kan notera att alltfler företag börjar känna av dynamiken i utvecklingen runt omkring sig och väljer att ansluta sig till den gröna rörelsen.

Information technology development has in recent decades had a major impact on retailing.Discount supermarket chains began to offer customers the possibility to shop without therequirement to do this over the counter, instead the customer could help themselves buyingthe products they wanted. Retailing today has an even greater focus on the self service in thesupermarkets, recently many retailing chains has introduced self-checkout systems toincrease the profits and reduce staffing requirements. In the 1960?s the start for today's ecommercewas founded, however the development took off 30 years later in the beginning of1990. During the first years of 2000 the consumption on the Internet increased rapidly.

The study examines the price elasticity of demand for cigarettes in the short- and long run in Sweden. The time period for the study is 17 years and covers the years 1996-2012. The results of the study shows that the price elasticity of demand for cigarettes in the long run is higher than in the short run for the Swedish consumers, which is in line with previous studies in the area. The fact that the price elasticity of demand for cigarettes is higher in the long run, indicates that the substitution effect has a significant impact on the price elasticity of demand for cigarettes in the long run. The study was conducted in two parts where the authors investigated the effect of cigarette tax on cigarette prices and in addition the cigarette prices impact on the demand for cigarettes in Sweden.

Problem statement and purpose:The purpose of this study was to analyze in what way first-time voters chose to take part of political information. The questions we aimed to answer was how first-time voters use media and other information channels for political purposes, what importance and trust the first-time voters give the different information channels and finally which indicators there is for that structural or individual factors affect the media consumption and political interest.Method and material:We did interviews with twelve 18 years old first-time voters from six different high school programs in Sundsvall, Sweden.Results:The study showed that the premier source of political information were traditional news media, in particular the debates on TV. It?s also in the debates the first-time voter?s trust the most. Even though the social medias are constantly present in their everyday life and even though the first-time voters believe the social medias have potential for engaging young people politically, the possibilities are only taken in advantage by people who are already politically interested.

Background: The background shows that since the consumption patterns constantly are changing and the Internet usage is growing it creates more opportunities for the companies to interact through new media. There are two ways to go for companies that intend to use social media as a marketing strategy, to be in the possession of their own information or get help from a third party.Problem definition: What factors are important in the long term survival of the companies when choosing a social media?Objective: The objective of this essay is to analyze and evaluate the personal blog and the company blog as an information technology strategy.Method: The essay will have a hermeneutic and quantitative approach in the form of a survey. Theories: Consumer Behavior, The Buying Decision Process, Involvement Theory, Business Concept, Branding, Total Communication Theory, Word-of-mouth/web and Service Profit Chain.Empiric: The empiric will consist of the results from the survey.Results: The result shows that the blog is effective as an information technology strategy however the companies should adapt their choice of blog to the products that they sell.Conclusion: Important factors for companies that seek long-term survival are involvement, communication and loyalty. It is also important to use a relationship marketing approach. .

New technology and urban sprawl have resulted in almost half of the population in Sweden being insufficiently physically active. The sedentary lifestyle causes heart- and vascular diseases, diabetes, high blood pressure, cancer, stress etc. in the population. One of the biggest priorities in the society is to promote more physical activity. Through literature studies and a questionnaire this paper will examine how we can design the built environment in order to promote physical exercise and if we can change the sedentary lifestyle with a outdoor environment that invite physical exercise. There are both internal and external factors that have importance for people?s physical activity.

Antalet arbetslösa ungdomar är stort i dagens samhälle. Det finns många åtgärder som bedrivs av landets kommuner som riktar sig till unga arbetslösa socialbidragstagare, men det finns för lite kunskap om dessas innehåll och resultat, samt om hur deltagandet i dessa åtgärder upplevs av ungdomarna själva.Syftet med denna studie är att få en ökad förståelse för vilka komponenter som deltagare iungdomsprojekt anser vara viktiga och varför. Vi vände oss till deltagare i projektet Green Team,som riktades mot långtidsarbetslösa ungdomar mellan 21 ? 25 år och som finansierades avstadsdelen Angered. Projektets syfte var att höja ungdomarnas sociala kompetens för att underlätta deras etablering på arbetsmarknaden.

The Energy Performance Certification in Sweden was developed as a tool to achieve the Government's target to reduce Sweden's energy consumption by 20 percent by 2020. The Energy Performance Certificate has previously received some criticism for not fulfilling its purpose. Questions that formed the basis for this report is how the energy performance certification provides support to buyers of single-family houses and if the energy performance improved in terms of reliability. The report begins with a background description that describes how the energy declaration works and some of the findings of previous evaluations and surveys. A survey to investigate the broker's position to energy performance have been conducted as well as interviews with buyers and sellers of houses. An investigation whether the energy performance can vary between different calculation programs, depending on various assumptions made by the energy declarant, has been made.Brokers and sellers have proved negative attitudes towards energy performance, particularly brokers.

In Sweden the amount of people with obesity has increased with almost 50 % during the past 20 years and is now including 500 000 people. A larger energy intake than energy consumption is today one of the most important cause of overweight and obesity that exist in the world. This requires more knowledge about healthier eating habits combined with moderate intensive exercise, exercise that is simple, effective and amusing. A god solution is a combination of fitness training and strength training, a type of circuit training. It is distinguished by a high intensive work in short periods and with a short break.

The goal of this paper is to find out how solar cells can improve energy efficiency on-board M/S Sydfart. The paper is based on a number of energy measurements on board the M/S Sydfart. The solar surface is calculated by measuring the available space for installing solar panels. Global radiation data is taken from STRÅNG's database, the data is then used to calculate the theoretical power produced by the solar cells. Energy efficiency is analysed in two ways.

There is a new beverage container on the market, a bottle made out of pure aluminum as a replacement for the traditional container made out of glass. This new container has the potential to reduce both cost and pollution during transportation, the lighter and stronger construction has every advantage compared to the old one in glass. The new container has every possibility to make it on the market. Some of the biggest brands within the soft drink market already use these bottles in countries without any recycling demands like: Coca-Cola, Heineken and Pepsi. The only thing stopping these brands from the Swedish market is the lack of a functional return system, there is only one company that uses the bottle in Sweden today and they take care of their own used bottles.

To achieve an optimal combustion, an even air/fuel ratio in the combustion chamber is required. An optimal combustion leads to reduced amount of emissions due to a more complete combustion, which is an important matter because of the sharpened environmental laws. This can be attained, among other things, by applying entirely variable cam times. To optimize the engines efficiency and its emissions at all workloads and speeds, an active valve control can be applied. This means that the intake and exhaust-valves can be opened and closed at any time, independent of the crankshaft position.