This thesis assesses several value chains for bioenergy production in Norway and combines these representing two Norwegian scenarios. The environmental impacts are assessed using the methodology of life cycle assessment (LCA). A complete assessment of climate change impact has been a core task, and biogenic CO2 emissions are accounted for throughout the value chains investigated. Surface albedo effects are included in the assessment of forest resources. In addition to global warming potential, the value chains are assessed for three other impact categories; acidification potential, particulate matter formation potential and terrestrial ecotoxicity potential. Life cycle inventories are constructed for a set of six feedstocks, seven treatment options, ten energy conversion options and three energy distribution choices. The different options are then combined to 80 feasible value chains. Transport is included throughout all the value chains. All inventories are assembled to represent Norwegian conditions. Energy flows for the different value chains investigated are found to represent the current bioenergy system, with a potential increase for each value chain towards 2020 - representing the alternative scenario. Results are generated for the individual value chains, the reference scenario and the alternative scenario. The results show large differences between the different value chains. Energy wood and waste wood are the most beneficial feedstocks for bioenergy production, highly dependent on both the GWPbio factors utilised and inclusion of surface albedo effects. Pelletising is the pre-treatment option resulting in the lowest GWP, while integrated torrefaction and pelletising results in the highest GWP. Overall, a CHP plant with electricity demand is the most advantageous conversion route. A stand-alone thermal electricity plant has the definite highest impact, mainly because of low conversion efficiency. Heat distribution shows high impacts compared to electricity and steam distribution, and the resources resulting in lower impacts is therefore recommended as inputs for such units. Generally, handling of biogenic CO2 emissions is of high importance. The same is the case for surface albedo effects, changing the GWP for forest resources considerably. CHP plants are recommended for electricity production from biomass, and use of TOP, forest residues and stemwood are recommended to take place in the same conversion technology. The environmental impacts from a CHP plant is low, and TOP, forest residues and stemwood show high GWP. The GWP from energy wood, wood waste and pellets are low, and are therefore recommended for use in district heating plants. As stand-alone electricity production is not recommended, the GWP from a district heating plant is limited with the use of the mentioned resources. Pelletising is recommended for pre-treatment of Norwegian biomass because of low climate change impacts. The Norwegian Government has put forth ambitious goals to reduce the GHG emissions substantially towards 2020 and become climate neutral by 2030. The reference scenario assessed show a GWP of 134 grams CO2-equivalents per kWh, while the scenario for 2020 results in a climate change impact of 136 grams CO2-equivalents per kWh. Based on this, Norwegian bioenergy can offer a means to reduce the GHG emissions towards 2020, but because of considerable GWP from biogenic CO2 emissions, bioenergy should not be pursued for a goal of becoming climate neutral by 2030.

Carbon Capture and Storage has large a potential to mitigating the CO2 emissions caused by fossil fuel powered power plants. CCS reduces the energy efficiency of the plant and increases the demand on chemicals and infrastructure. It is though not only the direct emissions from the power plants that have an impact on the environment. The entire supply chain of the power plant has an impact, and it is therefore necessary to evaluate the entire life cycle of the plant. This thesis consists of a full process LCA of post-combustion absorption based carbon capture and storage (CCS) technologies for both coal power plants and natural gas power plants. The assessed CCS technologies are based on the solvents MEA, MDEA and chilled ammonia. MEA is the most commonly used solvent in post-combustion capture, while MDEA and chilled ammonia represents novel CCS technologies that are still under development. It was shown that a 90% capture rate was possible for all of the assessed capture technologies. It was further shown that the total global warming potential (GWP) could be decreased with above 60%. 90% reduction is not possible because of indirect emissions in the supply chain. The reduction in GWP comes at a cost of decreasing energy efficiency, which further leads to an increase in consumption of materials and infrastructure. This causes the non-GHG related impacts to increase, compared to a base scenario without CCS. CCS technology based on MDEA was calculated to be the technology with the lowest impact, mainly because it has the lowest energy requirement. Chilled ammonia was assessed as the technology with the largest impacts. The reason for this is that the chilling process is very energy intensive and therefore decreases the efficiency more, compared to the other technologies assessed. Also the large emissions of ammonia have a large impact on the acidification potential and the marine eutrophication potential.

An integrated approach to climate and energy policy is required to meet the challenges associated with climate changes caused by anthropogenic emissions. At the same time, the demand for electricity is increasing. Wind power is considered as part of the solution in solving these challenges, as this is renewable energy. By relocating wind power production offshore, stronger winds are achieved that increases electricity production without having emissions of GHG during power production. Europe's ambitious goals and plans for development of offshore wind power development in the North Sea have also raised questions about how to integrate wind power into existing power systems in Europe. In this study the environmental impacts of offshore wind power production and development of an offshore grid in the North Sea, have been considered. To quantify the environmental impacts associated with offshore wind power generation and power transmission in the North Sea, several LCA’s have been carried out. Four LCA's were conducted, whereof three of them were analyses of various submarine cables used either in offshore wind farms or long-distance power transmission. The cables studied were; 33 kV HVAC cables used internally in offshore wind farms, 132 kV HVAC cables used to transmit power from a wind farm to the grid onshore and 450 kV HVDC cables used for long-distance power transmission between for instance countries. A fourth LCA was conducted of an entire offshore wind farm, including the inventories of the 33 kV and 132 kV cables. The emissions from a 390 MW offshore wind farm with bottom-fixed windmills, were calculated to be 20.6 g CO2 -equivalents/kWhel. Cabling constituted only 1.5 % of the total impacts to climate change from the wind farm. A larger wind farm of 9000 MW had lower estimated emissions of 19.8 g CO2 -equivalents/kWhel due to a higher electricity production. The LCA results of the 450 kV cables were used in estimating the environmental impact caused by different designs of offshore power grids in the North Sea. Several alternative grids were investigated, both with and without wind farms. For instance, a power grid in the North Sea where the two wind farms above were implemented, had estimated emissions of 84 million tonnes of CO2-equivalents throughout lifetime. This represents approximately 2% of the EU-27 countries' total GHG emissions from 2007. In addition to the quantification of environmental impacts, a qualitative discussion was conducted of the various environmental costs and benefits associated with large-scale development of power generation and transmission in the North Sea. The results from this study indicate that the expected environmental impacts from developing offshore wind farms and power grids in the North Sea are not insignificant. The positive environmental effects are large because the increased transmission capacity between power markets allows for increased development of electricity generation from intermittent renewable energy sources like wind power. Increased share of renewable energy reduces the need for power generation from fossil fuels, thus there will be an environmental gain. The study seeks to emphasize the complexity and the important aspects of the assessment of environmental impacts associated with large power systems.

Energy from wood biomass is one of the prioritized areas of focus in current Norwegian energy politics. The prevailing perception of bioenergy is that it is climate neutral, making this strategy appear to be an effective measure in combating climate change. Furthermore, bioenergy is considered to be relatively source of energy, and steadily increasing Norwegian forests imply huge amounts of wood available. However, not all of this wood is easily accessible with current technology and market situations (i.e. prices). As wood also is used for many other purposes, mainly construction and paper production, the bioenergy industry will have to compete with these other industries for the access to raw materials. A change in current utilization of our wood resources is in this thesis assessed in an environmental perspective in order to better understand how such a shift would influence the overall environmental impacts. First, a wood flow mapping of the current (2006) situation was carried out and applied in a ‘hybrid life cycle assessment’ model utilizing life cycle inventories which represent the industries within the Norwegian wood products sector. Then, an alternative wood flow scenario where more wood were used for bioenergy purposes, at the expense of reduced domestic paper- and wood panel production, was studied. Besides from being highly representative for Norwegian conditions, the model was developed with the intention of being able to show the breakdown of environmental impacts for both for entire sector as well as for specific products and industries. Furthermore, in contrast to the current dominant perception, recent research has pointed to the fact that the resulting greenhouse gas emissions from combustion of biomass will have a significant climate change impact even if new biomass is replanted immediately, as the gases will spend a considerable time in the atmosphere before being absorbed. This new insight may seriously influence the perceived effectiveness of bioenergy in climate change mitigation efforts. Consequently, it was considered valuable to include estimated climate change impact potentials of biogenic carbon emissions (CO2 and CH4) in this assessment. Although the developed model probably should be further refined before ultimate conclusions are made based on the assessment results, some important observations can be commented. First of all, it was clearly shown that whether or not climate change impacts from biogenic carbon emissions are considered is highly relevant to the overall climate change mitigation effect of bioenergy. Still, even when these are included there are considerable environmental gains when e.g. substituting fossil energy with wood-based bioenergy. Secondly, the results illustrate how impacts from different environmental impact categories are distributed within the wood products sector (pulp & paper production clearly being the dominant industry), within the products’ value chains and for the overall system (characterized by the impacts from paper- and heat production as well as the use of transportation fuels).

Hovudmålet med denne rapporten har vore å evaluera moglege løysingar for energieffektive tørkesystem basert på solenergi. Gjennom litteraturstudiet vert det funne at opne system for soltørking har ei rekkje generelle problem: Store avlingstap kjem som følgje av utilstrekkeleg tørking, sopp, insekt, fuglar, gnagarar, støv og søppel, samt uventa nedbør og andre uforutsette værforhold. Lukka soltørker kan eliminera eller redusera mange av desse problema, men dei har alle det til felles at dei baserer seg på tørketemperaturar over omgjevnadstemperatur. Tørking ved relativt låge temperaturar kan vera med å bevara ei rekkje ønska kvalitetar til fersk mat. Lukka varmepumpetørker kan operera uavhengig av værforhold, gjeva tørketemperaturar under omgjevnadstemperatur, og tilbyr slik ein attraktiv moglegheit for å auka produktkvalitet og redusera øydelegging gjennom god kontroll over, og regulering av tørkebetingelsane. For å levera tørkeluft med tilstrekkeleg låg luftfuktighet, og ved temperaturar under omgjevnadstemperatur trengst det kjøling. Eit litteraturstudium er gjort kring solkjølingsteknologiar. For ei tørke med solbasert energiforsyning, vil ein naturleg konsekvens vera tidsvarierande energitilgang, og dermed tidsvarierande drift. Eit tenkt tørkesystem er difor planlagt slik at tørka går om dagen, og står stille om natta. Det er utført eksperiment med tørking av fisk, med mål om å kartlegga korleis ein slik døgnsyklus vil påverka tørkeforløpet. Hovudkonklusjonen er at ein slik syklus vil vera energisparande, men meir tidkrevjande enn tilsvarande tørking med kontinuerlig drift. Det vert også vist at tørkeprosessen går fortare ved 20°C/26%RH enn ved 10°C/50°RH.Ei tørke basert på ein standard 40-fots isolert ISO-container vert dimensjonert til å kunna tørka 122 tonn fisk (fersk vekt) årleg ved tørketemperatur 15°C, relativ fuktighet 40%, og 10 timars dagleg drift. Tørka krev 56,2kW kjøleeffekt ved 0°C, og vifteeffekt 16,3kW. Med effektbehovet kartlagt vert ulike solbaserte energiforsyningssystem vurdert. Litteraturstudiet resulterer i at ein del solkjølingsteknologiar, blant anna ejektorkjøling med CO2 som arbeidsmedium, vert vurdert som lite aktuelle for det tenkte systemet. Dei gjenverande kjøleteknologiane som vert grundigare undersøkt er dei termisk drivne teknologiane ejektorkjøling (med arbeidsmedium R134a/R11/H2O) og absorpsjonskjøling (med LiBr-vatn som arbeidspar), samt konvensjonell elektrisk driven dampkompresjon med R717-ammoniakk som arbeidsmedium. For anskaffelse av naudsynt termisk energi vert uisolerte flatplatesolfangarar, isolerte flatplatesolfangarar og vakuumrøyrsolfangarar vurdert. For anskaffelse av elektrisk energi vert solcellepanel vurdert mot termisk solfangar + varmemotor og generator. Ulike systemløysingar for å levera kjøleenergi til tørka vert så samanlikna på grunnlag av naudsynt solfangarareal, solfangarkostnad, og kjølarkostnad. Solfangarkostnaden er om lag 10 gongar høgare enn kjølarkostnaden for alle systemløysingar. Av dei undersøkte løysingane vert solcelledriven dampkompresjonskjøling funne å vera den minst kostbare og minst arealkrevjande løysinga. Ved 10 timars drift i døgnet, kan tørka drivast utelukkande frå solenergi frå 512 m2 solcellepanel til ein estimert kostnad €255.800. Vifta i tørka står for over halvparten av energibruken. Alle andre systemløysingar innebar høgare solfangarkostnader og større solfangarareal. Nest etter solcelledriven dampkompresjon ser eitt- eller to-trinns absorpsjonskjøling, driven av vakuumrøyrsolfangarar, ut til å vera det mest interessante alternativet. To-trinnsløysinga inneber litt mindre solfangarareal og –kostnader, men krev til gjengjeld eit system som tåler 145°C i forhold til eitt-trinnssystemet som går ved 90°C. Høgare temperaturar kan gjere det meir komplisert med termisk energilagring. Ved nytting av konsentrerande solfangerar kan solfangararealet i fleire av systemløysingane meir enn halverast.For klimatiske forhold og tilgjengeleg solinnstråling er det teke utgangspunkt i Mumbai, India.

The aim of this study was to determine the level of environmental impact and primary energy resulting from demands placed on residential ventilation and heating systems; a conventional residential house built to the 2007 Norwegian building code with a standard heating system was compared against three technology scenarios used in a passive house of the equivalent size. Both houses have wooden framework and cladding and are projected by the Norwegian building company Norbohus. An economical evaluation of the heating systems was also done. The alternative heating option for the conventional house, Stord TEK 07, was based on current Norwegian energy consumption patterns; a combination of electricity and firewood is used to meet heating demand. This heating mix was also modeled as an option for the heating requirements of the passive house, named Stord Passive S1. Additionally, a solar collector system (Stord Passive S2) and an air-to-water heat pump (Stord Passive S3) were modeled for the passive house. Finally, a balanced mechanical ventilation system was evaluated for both buildings. The life-cycle assessment method used was the ReCiPe method and the electricity used in the operation phase was based on the Nordic electricity mix.The results of this study indicate that Stord TEK 07 has the largest emission output in relation to output of CO2-eq, presented in the impact category “Climate change”. From a life-cycle perspective, the heating system requirements of a Stord TEK 07 house are 47.5 and 45 percent higher than the renewable energy solutions of passive house scenarios S2 and S3, respectively. Total life-cycle primary energy requirements in the Stord TEK 07 house were almost twice that of the renewable solutions in the passive house. Using the Norwegian standard heating system of Stord TEK 07 in a passive house as was done in Stord Passive S1, also results in a large improvement; output of CO2-eq and use of primary energy was reduced by 34-35 percent. Stord TEK 07 has also the highest emission output in most of the other impact categories and the largest present value costs, when building constructing costs are excluded. The heat pump solution, Stord Passive S3, has the lowest impact in most categories; however, the solar collector system Stord Passive S2, had lower output of CO2-eq. Stord Passive S2 has also lower present value costs then the air-water heat pump Stord Passive S3.A balanced ventilation system with 80 percent heat recovery was studied for both the houses. The benefit of heat recovery is recognizable in all the impact categories considered. The energy consumption and potential harmful emissions resulting from the electrical energy used by fans during the life cycle far exceed the environmental impacts that result from manufacture and transportation of the ventilation unit. The study revealed that the heat-recovery system must have efficiency greater than 15 percent to achieve reduction concerning output of CO2-eq and use of primary energy for Stord TEK 07; this requirement increases to 42 percent in houses built to the passive house standard house, Stord Passive.

Det siste tiåret har småkraftutbygginger økt kraftig. Små kraftverk har generelt blitt oppfattet som mindre kontroversielt enn større magasinkraftverk, men lite er gjort for å sammenligne disse to kraftverkstypene når det gjelder nytteverdi og miljøpåvirkning. Målet med denne rapporten var å gjøre en sammenligning av et større magasinkraftverk og flere små elvekraftverk med tanke på produksjon, økonomi, naturinngrep, miljøvirkning og samfunnsnytte. Videre var det ønskelig å gjøre en mer generell vurdering av små kraftverk og et større magasinkraftverk, med utgangspunkt i de analyserte kraftverkene. Studieområdet var Kvannevatn og Sagelva i Rana kommune, der det i dag står tre små elvekraftverk, Kvannevatn kraftverk, Sagelva I og Sagelva II. Minikraft AS, som er eier av disse elvekraftverkene, søkte tidligere om å få bygge et større magasinkraftverk. Sammenligningen tar utgangspunkt i dagens små elvekraftverk og et tenkt tilfelle med kun det planlagte magasinkraftverket. Analysen av magasinkraftverket ble basert på dataprogrammet nMAG2004 som er en simuleringsmodell for drift og kraftproduksjon i vannkraftsystemer. Simuleringene forutsetter informasjon om blant annet magasin, kraftstasjoner, energimarkedet, restriksjonsdata, operasjonsstrategi og hydrologiske data. De hydrologiske dataene for både magasinkraftverket og de små kraftverkene ble basert på en nærliggende målestasjon, Bredek.For å strukturere de ulike konsekvensene ved en planlagt magasinkraftutbygging, ble Samla plan-metoden benyttet. Den kategoriserer konsekvensene inn i primære virkninger, fysiske virkninger, det levende miljø og til slutt brukerinteressene. Metoden ga også et grunnlag for å fastsette en miljøbasert minstevannføring. Ved å bruke Samla plan-metoden ble fisk og den estetiske opplevelsen av elva vurdert til å være de viktigste verdiene i Sagelva for å sette et miljøbasert krav til minstevannføring. Disse verdiene ville mest sannsynlig ikke blitt ivaretatt ved den minstevannføringen som var planlagt basert på tradisjonelle beregninger til å være 0,035 m3/s om vinteren, og 0,135 m3/s om sommeren. Kravet til en miljøbasert minstevannføring ble satt ved hjelp av building block-metoden som baseres på at hvert definerte behov utgjør en building block i vannføringsregimet (Alfredsen, Harby, Linnansaari, & Ugedal, 2011).Resultatene fra denne masteroppgaven viser at magasinkraftverket har mulighet til å slippe en miljøbasert vannføring og fortsatt ivareta en lønnsom produksjon. Den miljøbaserte minstevannføringen for magasinkraftverket ble satt til 0,15 m3/s fra september til og med april, 0,5 m3/s i mai, 1,5 m3/s i juni og juli, og 0,5 m3/s i august. Denne minstevannføringen ville imidlertid ikke vært forenlig med god produksjon for de små elvekraftverkene. Magasinkraftverket kan også produsere kraft gjennom hele året på grunn av reguleringsmuligheten, noe de tre elvekraftverkene ikke har mulighet til. Det ble derfor konkludert med at magasinkraftverket har større samfunnsnytte enn de tre små kraftverkene med tanke på leveringssikkert. Basert på studiet av de tre elvekraftverkene og magasinkraftverket i Sagelva kan det videre konkluderes med at man ikke kan bevare viktige verdier i et vassdrag ved å sette et minstevannføringskrav gjennom et standardisert «skrivebords-studie». Siden hvert eneste vassdrag er unikt, er det rimelig å anta at disse verdiene må kartlegges og vurderes spesielt for hvert vassdrag, og at krav til minstevannføring bør settes spesielt ut i fra hvilke verdier som skal ivaretas.Ut ifra beregninger viste det seg at det opprinnelig planlagte magasinkraftverket ikke var optimalisert, da bare 2-3 meter av en reguleringshøyde på 10 meter ble utnyttet i et normalår. I tillegg ville flomtapet i et normalår være stort. Dette gjorde at sammenligningen av det planlagte magasinkraftverket og de små kraftverkene basert på produksjonen ville bli misvisende, ettersom magasinkraftverket ikke var optimalisert.På grunn av den dårlige utnyttelsen av magasinet som var planlagt opprinnelig, ble det utført en ny beregning av magasinkraftverket. Denne beregningen optimaliserer ikke magasinkraftverket fullstendig, men var ment til å gi en indikasjon på hvilket potensiale det har. Resultatene fra denne beregningen viste at magasinkraftverket har potensialet til å produsere større mengder kraft enn de tre små elvekraftverkene, men at en optimalisering av magasinkraftverket er nødvendig.

As a consequence of increased government efforts to reduce local Norwegian CO_2-emissions the development of small distributed generators have increased. This development is assumed to continue, but at an increasing incremental cost due to the inferior profitability of remaining prospects. To maintain profitability of smaller and high cost distributed generators, cost savings must be implemented. Quality of supply is a significant factor in determining potential profitability. Hence, a significant potential in cost reduction lies in increasing quality of supply. This can be achieved by utilizing the decentralized nature of these power producers by enabling intended island operation. By enabling these generators to run in intended island mode, they are able to supply their local grid with power when fallout of the main grid or other components occurs. This increases the uptime for local customers and therefore increases quality of supply. Five different grids are modeled in PowerFactory based on collected empirical data for the evaluation of the potential for islanding in Norway. With these models different cases utilizing islanding schemes are simulated and the reliability of these configurations compared to a base case representing normal operations. The results from this analysis suggest big reductions in the reliability indices “Energy Not Supplied” and “System Average Interruption Frequency” are possible. In the thesis the reductions achieved are in the 10%-60% range of the base case. The estimated savings earned from increased reliability of supply does not justify the assumed investment needed, but the numbers are not conclusive. Better estimates of expenses and assessing other grids with better prerequisites for islanding could indicate to be profitability.

This Master’s thesis proposes a method for implementing an enhanced hydropower planning formulation in a long-term expansion planning model. The motivation for this work is the important role that hydropower plays in a generation investment environment. In a time where penetration of intermittent renewable energy sources like wind and solar power is heavily increasing, new challenges in the continuous balancing of supply and demand are also introduced. Hydropower and its use of reservoirs as power batteries can respond more or less immediately to such fluctuations. As such, a detailed framework for hydropower scheduling is highly relevant.The presented implementation is carried out in an already-existing expansion planning model for Europe called EMPIRE, which is written in Mosel Xpress. This is a two-stage stochastic optimization model whose objective function is to minimize the total net present value of expected operational costs and investment costs for generation and transmission capacities.The main feature of the proposed framework involves penalization of hydropower through water values. This necessitates a complete hydropower scheduling representation where each reservoir is divided into segments which are assigned a fictitious marginal cost. The inclusion of water values enables comparability with the short-run marginal cost for competitive technologies and introduces the important aspect of conserving water for other periods of the year. Data from SINTEF Energy Research has been used for this purpose.Results from optimization runs in the time span from 2010 to 2060 for an EU 20-20-20 like policy scenario show that the original hydropower availability is too relaxed, thereby causing an overvaluation of this technology. The revamped cost representation by means of water values leads to a lower utilization of hydropower relative to the original model. An earlier deployment of solar power is carried out to replace the lower generation, with a capacity difference between the final and original models peaking at 45% in 2040. Total costs in the system are therefore increased. For both models extensive investments in intermittent renewables are taking place, amounting to 47% of the total capacity in 2060.