Australia is one of the largest producers and consumers of fossil fuels in the world. In a society where the effects of fossil fuels on global warming are constantly discussed, the nation?s production and consumption are subject to debate. Problems arise when negative aspects of consumption, such as emissions of greenhouse gases, are put in relation to an increased need of energy and economic growth. However, it is important to distinguish between different types of fossil fuels when it comes to their individual impact on the environment and to analyze the possibilities to increase the more environmental friendly ones.

To get rid of our dependence on fossil fuels we need to make use of Renewable energy sources like wind power to a greater extent. Even though wind power is a renewable energy source it can still cause some problems for the close environment. One of the problems is shadow flickering. When the sun is low and the wind blows in a direction so that the rotor blades are positioned at right angles to the sunbeams and ?cut? the sunbeams off.

Most of the portable electronic devices use a battery as a primary power source. Nowadays, when the applications are becoming smaller and smaller and more power efficient, the designer needs to concentrate more on reducing power consumption, using secondary power sources and introducing power storage devices. Multiple power source availability and a power storage device on the board will make the applications much more useful and efficient in everyday use. This thesis proposes a power supply unit (PSU) for wireless sensor platforms which is capable of supplying a sensor node with energy from multiple sources, as well as status information from the PSU. Present power storage devices, like electric double-layer capacitors (EDLCs) and batteries, have become more and more common as their characteristics have developed.

Today many buildings and it´s nearby surroundings are designed to achieve some kind of environmental goal.The issue concerning energy consumption is currently at focus and it is relevant that we start increase the share of renewable energy. Solar energy is an infinite resource and should therefore be considered when selecting an energy supplier. Uppsala University hospital is facing major restructuring when parts of the existing buildings will be refurbished and a large new building will be constructed. White Architects have developed a study concerning the new building and for some of the existing buildings on the hospital campus. Uppsala County requires tough energy measures and wants the new building to be classified as an eco-building in Whites following work. The classifications will involve high energy source requirements. This work has been conducted to see if solar power can be envisaged as a supplementary energy source for the University hospital and also to investigate the aesthetic impact of solar cells on the new building.

The high level of energy consumption that the industrialised countries have reached and thepollution that this brings has long been a cause for analysis and debate, development and usageof so called Renewable energy sources is therefore more important than ever. The energy in theelectromagnetic radiation from the sun is an interesting alternative. One way of harvesting thisenergy is by using solar cells, devices that generate DC current when exposed to electromagneticradiation.The goal of this master?s thesis was to design a solar powered power supply to Syntronic AB?sMidrange platform. The envisioned application is a stand-alone distributed embedded system,for example a node-based temperature monitoring system.

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.

Humanity stands before a huge challenge to lower its emissions of carbon dioxide and its use of energy at the same time as the global population is rising and the developing countries are being industrialized. A lot of newly built buildings are due to this challenge, designed to be more energy efficient but also use renewable energy resources instead of pollutant fossil fuels .Solar energy is one of the purest forms of energy that exists in abundant amounts, which is why it is most likely that it could come to play a major part in the future energy market. The main purpose of this report is to investigate the possibility to implement a sustainable energy system with solar thermal heat and  heat storage as main sources of energy in the neighborhood ?kvarteret Lagern?, which is the area where the old football stadium ?Rasunda Stadion? was located. New developments within different heat storage techniques have opened up new approaches to enable buildings an all year round heat supply from solar energy. This report will focus on heat storage in boreholes. At the present here is only a preliminary plan of how the neighborhood is supposed to be designed.

Energy efficiency has become a very topical issue that has been discussed throughout the European Union for preventing negative environmental impacts that have been associated with the consumption of energy. In the residential sector have mainly municipalities set strict requirements for the reduction of energy consumption while the renewable energy has been asked. Different concepts of low-energy buildings have been developed to reduce the cost of operation and maintenance in existing buildings such as in new ones.This thesis has aimed to minimize the energy cost of a large building which has had low energy consumption features originally. Energy reviews has been initiated in order to be able for showing how the house electricity could be carried out even more efficiently.The work was initiated through a literature study to clearly increase the reliability on the energy subject. Different concepts of low-energy buildings have been treated in connection with its specifications, afterward those have been compared with the obtained results.

Fuel produced from renewable resources is of big interest. In this project the difference between a few different renewable materials are compared on the matter of environmental load when ethanol is produced. The renewable materials that are compared are Salix, straw and reed canary-grass (rörflen). The cellulose in the material is cut down to small pieces and then hydrolysed so that the sugar from the cellulose can be fermented into ethanol. Tha amount of ethanols that is studied in this work is the smount of ethanol needed to cultivate 1000 ha. The functional unit in the report is 1000 ha.

AbstractThe Municipality Council decided in 2010 to develop a comprehensive energy efficiency strategy with financial and methodological support from Energimyndigheten (The Swedish Energy Agency). The strategy should include 3 major parts: an inventory of the 2009 energy use defining the current situation, the 2014 and 2020 goals for energy use, and an action plan for goal achievements. According to Energimyndigheten, the strategy must include all municipal administration premises, vehicles, and all majority-owned companies (as Laholmshem, the municipal housing company).The report describes the inventory work in order to obtain the 2009 energy use and the sources of information used. The inventory values are used as the base year values for the 2014 and 2020 goals. The inventory showed that information about the vehicles is dispersed in the municipal administration and no clear structure exists with respect to mileage and fuels used.

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 paper goes through solar energy and what uses it has. It is also a guide in the choice of solar collectors forthe real estate that I have drawn for the thesis work.Solar energy is a renewable source of energy from the Sun's light. Energy can be used to produce both heat andelectricity through solar collectors and solar cells. Some of the benefits of solar energy is that it is completely freeto extract, environmentally friendly and virtually maintenance-free. Disadvantages are that the technology isexpensive, does not cover the entire energy needs and takes a long time until it pays.

The housing sector of today represents for almost 40% of the energy consumption, an energy consumption of which the major part consists of non-Renewable energy sources. This is not sustainable and utilization of new energy-efficient technologies in buildings can be a step in the right direction, towards a sustainable energy society.This report has been made on behalf of and in cooperation with Älvstranden Utveckling AB in Gothenburg to examine how future energy-efficient technologies can affect the energy demand in energy-efficient multi-dwelling buildings.The report is based on Älvstrandens passive house, Hamnhuset, a house whose energy consumption is far below the BBR's requirements. The report looks at the opportunities for improvement within windows, insulation, solar energy technologies, as well as white goods. Computer simulations are then made to apply the selected technologies into a reference building. Technologies are selected from an energy efficient perspective and no account has been taken of other aspects such as the economy.

Volvo Trucks is the second largest manufacturer of heavy trucks, with factories in several countries and with around 21 000 employees. At the plant in Tuve, trucks have been built since 1982 and the activity mainly consists of producing side members and to assemble and packing kits of trucks. In 2005, the factory in Tuve launched the ambition to be the first carbon dioxide neutral vehicle factory in the world. This will be implemented by streamlining and investing in renewable energy. The aim of this degree thesis is to map the usage of energy within production, and also to prepare a method to measure key figures (use of energy per produced unit).

The latest thing in the area of environmental building today is energy-plus-house. The idea behind the energy-plus-house is to create a house that produces more energy than it consumes. To accomplish this, the house uses renewable energy, in this particular case solar energy. With the help from a proper construction and thoughtfully projected installations you can achieve a surplus of energy. The surplus energy can then be sold to the surrounding buildings and thereby conduce to a financial profit for the household.