The industrial sector accounts for almost 40 % of the Swedish energy use and in order to meet the EU’s 2020 targets, an efficient production of high quality and great finish goods are more and more in demand. Moreover, it is important to develop the activities with the lowest environmental impact possible.  The energy audit process is an effective tool to achieve it. Thus, in this document the energy audit of an industrial company, Automat Industrier in Gävle, Sweden, was carried out. The energy balance of the building and the potential energy efficiency measures were analyzed with the IDA ICE simulation. The proposed energy retrofitting was apropos of the building envelope, the lighting system, the ventilation system and the installation of a PV system on the roof of the building. The survey indicated that the potential energy savings of the company accounted for 62.5 % of the current electricity use and 48.8 % of the current DH use if all the proposed ameliorations were performed. The main promoter of the electricity savings is the installation of the PV system, with 85 % of influence. Almost 90 % of the DH savings are due to the measures in the ventilation system. Financially, these savings can reach the amounts of 531 597 SEK/year for electricity and 174 201 SEK/year for DH. Nevertheless, the ameliorations regarding the building envelope have very long payback periods. Thus, it was recommended to not pursue them. Fortunately, the energy efficiency measures providing the greatest savings’ payback periods are between 3.47 years and 10.22 years long. As they are independent from each other, the owner has the freedom to decide whether to apply them or not and when if so.

Syftet med denna kvalitativa studie är att bidra med kunskap om hur Norrland och norrlänningar skildras i TV-serien Rebecka Martinsson, samt om Norrland skildras från ett inifrån- eller utifrånperspektiv. Metoden som använts är fallstudie och data har insamlats genom egna observationer med Faircloughs tredimensionella analysmodell som teoretisk ram. Resultatet pekar mot att Norrland och norrlänningar förvisso skildras på ett stereotypt sätt i Rebecka Martinsson, men att det också förekommer en stor mängd nyansering där människormed norrländskt ursprung också tillåts att bryta mot den rådande diskursen. I diskussionssegmentet lyfts blicken och där görs jämförelser med andra populärkulturella verk. I det segmentet diskuteras också studiens styrkor såväl som svagheter, bland annat att det utvalda materialet är relativt litet och att med ett annat urval hade resultatet eventuellt kunnat bli annorlunda. Som förslag till fortsatt forskning ges att göra en undersökning på samma utvalda material, men med annan metod, alternativt använda samma metod och teoretisk ram men välja ut annat eller en större mängd material att analysera.

The global share from buildings towards energy usage in residential and commercial buildings have been increasing constantly reaching between 20% to 40% in developed countries and has overtook the other major sectors: industrial and transportation. Energy demand reduction in the building sector is important for Sweden to achieve national energy aims for reduced energy use in the future.  For this reason, energy efficiency measures in buildings today is one of the main objective for energy policy towards 2020 goals.   This project moves on the same path to find energy efficiency potential in Fridhemsskolan buildings in Gävle, Sweden by performing energy audit using IDA-ICE software to simulate energy performance for the buildings under study. In addition, measurements have been made on three of the school buildings named Hus 1, Hus 2 and Hus 3.   The results include different energy efficiency retrofits on each building and economic analysis of these retrofits for each building individually and for the whole buildings together. The presented measures are reducing working hours of the ventilation system in Hus 2, change of CAV system with VAV system in (Hus 1 and Hus 2) and lights changing to LED, s efficient lights and building envelope improvement which includes walls and roof extra insulation and windows replacement.   Replacement of the CAV system in Hus 1 and Hus 2 were not economically beneficial when considering their high cost compared to energy reduction that can be achieved by applying them. On the other hand, energy retrofits analysis showed that combination of the following energy efficiency measures is the most effective and profitable: extra insulation (walls and roof), windows replacement and lights change to LED in the three buildings. In addition to these measure is reducing running hours of the ventilation system in Hus 2.   Implementation of the recommended energy efficiency measures will save 120, 737 kWh/ year of the district heating and 21, 962 kWh/year electricity consumption with capital investment of 417, 396 SEK and 98, 957 SEK/ year cost saving with payback period of 4.2 years. These figures represent 40.3% and 18.1% reduction in district heating and electricity energy use respectively.   Since reducing working hours of ventilation system measure has no capital investment and have the highest figure of energy reduction it reduces payback period significantly. In case the amount of money saved by this measure doesn’t consider; payback period for the other measures which require capital investment will be 13.5 years and the energy saving in terms of cost will be 30, 874 SEK/ year.

Background: Iron deficiency, anemia, and iron excess have been associated with altered hearing functions in children and adults. Animal studies suggest that iron deficiency during pregnancy negatively affect fetal auditory development. The relationship between maternal iron status and auditory functions in healthy term newborns has not been clearly elucidated among humans. The goal of this pilot study was to determine the relationship between markers of iron status during pregnancy and brainstem auditory function in healthy neonates. Methods: Pregnant women who gave birth at the Montfort Hospital were recruited to take part in this study (n=6). Within two weeks after birth, their newborn’s hearing function was assessed by wave amplitude, latency and inter-latency from the Auditory Brainstem Response (ABR) test. Markers of iron status, namely hemoglobin (Hb) and mean corpuscular volume (MCV), were collected retrospectively for the first and second trimester from the women’s medical chart. Results: Overall, no significant relationship was observed between maternal Hb and MCV concentrations and newborns auditory function. Although two significant Spearman correlations were observed (MCV and inter-latency I-V; r=0.87; p=0.005 and Hb and amplitude V; r=0.89; p=0.04), these findings may be due to chance because of multiple testing and the small sample size. Conclusion: Although iron is a key nutrient involved in the brain and auditory system development, we were not able to demonstrate a relationship between iron status during pregnancy and newborn hearing function. Prospective or intervention studies with a larger sample size and with more specific iron markers (ex. ferritin) are required to confirm these findings.

Kyrkor som är byggda innan år 1940 skyddas i enlighet med 4 kap. Kyrkliga kulturminnen ur Kulturmiljölagen. Samtidigt efterfrågar kyrkobesökare större krav på inomhusklimatet som för kyrkornas inventarier leder till skador. De två parametrarna temperatur samt relativ fukthalt, och förhållandet mellan dem, utgör därför en viktig del för både bevarandet av kulturhistoriska byggnader och dess inventarier. Vederslövs kyrka är byggd i sten och anses vara en av Kronobergs läns mest välbevarade kyrkor från slutet av 1800-talet. Efter inhämtning av mätvärden från JEFF Electronics styrsystem och utplacerade loggrar i kyrkan har simulering i IDA ICE utförts. Därefter har fyra stycken energieffektiviseringsåtgärder för Vederslövs kyrka presenterats.

Globally, buildings utilize 35 % of the final energy use and contribute to approximately one-third of CO2 emissions. Hence, reducing the energy use of buildings contributes to a large amount of CO2 emissions to be decreased. The building’s energy use is affected by many parameters, including wind which plays an important role in building energy use. In this thesis, we aim to analyze the impact of wind parameters on building’s energy use on two multi-family building types with natural ventilation at various wind sheltering conditions at different climatic zones in Sweden. Building energy simulation models (BES) of a standalone and an attached building located in Visby, Sweden, were constructed with the use of the dynamic BES IDA ICE. Luleå and Malmö were taken as other two study locations to investigate the impact from different climate zones. The simulations were performed with the constructed calculation models, with the various wind sheltering conditions at the different climatic zones to calculate the energy use of the buildings and ventilation and infiltration losses. The sensitivity analysis was then carried out based on changing the wind profile of the climate file to evaluate the impact of wind on the ventilation and infiltration losses, as well as the heat energy use of the building. The results showed that the energy use for space heating of the attached building was 89 kWh/m2 (38 %) lower than the standalone building. The energy use varies between 9–20 kWh/m2 (3–10 %) considering the exposed, semi-exposed and sheltered wind condition for the two building types. In the different climate zones, Luleå has 47 kWh/m2 higher energy use compared to Visby and Malmö for the standalone building. The corresponding figure for the attached building is 25 kWh/m2. The sensitivity analysis show that when the wind speed is increased by 100 %, the ventilation and infiltration losses increase between 3563–18683 kWh (54–61 %) while the energy use of the building increases between 11–54 kWh/m2 (20–27 %).

The importance of energy efficiency in the operation of the built environment is becoming increasingly important. Energy use in the building sector has exceeded both transportation and industry, while within buildings heating, ventilation, and air conditioning has the greatest share. In light of the recent pandemic forcing governments to issue quarantines and stay-at-home orders people are spending even more time indoors, this further emphasizes the importance of proper ventilation and the impacts on energy use. The purpose of this research was to perform a case study of a low environmental impact demonstration house to compare the energy performance of various ventilation strategies. The ventilation strategies varied by overall airflow rate, control strategy, and the presence of heat recovery. Performance was evaluated by establishing a model in IDA ICE, an equation-based modeling tool for the simulation of indoor thermal climate and energy use. The results showed energy savings due to demand-control with a reduction of 12.5%. Results also showed similar savings with a heat recovery system, indicating that any savings in heat loss due to heat recovery is at the expense of increased auxiliary energy. In this particular case, the benefit of upgrading to a heat recovery system from simple demand control set up is not readily apparent. Results also demonstrated trends and possible complications useful to future research plans that aim to measure real world ventilation performance, including how differences in the number and location of sensors impact the efficacy of the demand-controlled systems. A secondary aim was to observe how a newly constructed, low environmental impact home built in Sweden performs according the residential LEED energy budget. The results demonstrated that constructing a house using low impact materials with low embodied energy does not have to negatively impact energy performance, scoring extremely well in the Energy and Atmosphere category of a widely used sustainable building rating system.

In Sweden, there are around 300 000 multi-family buildings with high energy consumption state a high renovation potential in the building sector. This study aims to analyze different renovation measures for a typical theoretical multi-family building to determine their effects on energy consumption, financial profitability, and impacts on obtaining an energy label in the rating system. The reference building was created based on the given energy consumption for the Nils Holgersson building (NH), where the information data accumulated and assessed utilizing dynamic energy simulation software IDA ICE.The selected renovation measures include modifications to the building envelope and ventilation. The reference building was equipped with an exhaust ventilationsystem with no heat recovery. The study showed that heat losses through ventilation contributed to the largest share. The losses through windows and walls are significant; hence selecting ventilated façade and adding insulation were relevant efficiency measures. The study analysis a vacuum insulation panel (VIP) applied for external walls due to its highly efficient thermal properties compared to conventional insulation. The results of life cycle cost analyses (LCCA) for 40 years demonstrated that VIP and ventilated façade have an economic benefit because of the energy cost saving during the operation phase of the building, despite the high initial cost. The cumulative LCC for each measure showed that VIP approaching the conventional insulation within theservice life the ventilated façade is cost-efficient at the end of the 6thyear compared to changing glazing. The selected rating system is Miljöbyggnad (MB). After renovation, the NH building could achieve the bronze level on the energy indicators.The study found that the energy consumption in the base model was 144.7 kWh/m2and the implemented renovation package leads to a reduction of 47 % annual heating demand. As a rule of thumb, the annual energy demand will be 90 kWh/m2, and the cost for the renovation package including installation would be 1150 SEK/m2causing a total energy-saving 2900 SEK/m2at the end of 40 years.

This thesis investigates the possibilities of using hybrid ventilation in an office building in Stockholm. The focus is on simulating the natural airflow to find out for which conditions it is sufficient. The thesis is done at White Arkitekter AB in cooperation and under the supervision of environmental specialists working there. A literature study is carried out to study what has been done before in Sweden as well as in other countries. Computer simulations are used to simulate the airflow to examine the conditions and architecture. A synthetic computer model representing a realistic office building is built up as a starting point. The ventilation method for the natural ventilation part is to take air in through the fa\c{c}ade and use the stack effects in an atrium for natural ventilation. By altering the architecture and the sizes of the openings according to the results from the simulations the building is dimensioned and formed to cope with the rules and requirements about the indoor air quality in workplaces. The simulations are done with a multi zone energy performance simulation tool that can simulate airflows and indoor air climate conditions in the zones as well as the energy consumption. Computational fluid dynamics calculations are then used to more closely simulate the conditions within the zones. The results from those simulations suggest that the natural ventilation as a part of a hybrid ventilation works for all the floors of the building for up to 10$\,^{\circ}\mathrm{C}$. The computational fluid dynamics simulations showed that the thermal comfort of all the occupants is fulfilled for these conditions but there is a risk of occupants experiencing draught because of to high velocities in the air especially for the colder outdoor temperatures. For the higher outdoor temperatures the airflow needs to be enforced to ensure sufficient conditions for the occupants and for the colder temperatures mechanical ventilation is needed to decrease heat losses and avoid the risk of draught.

Amorphous silicon photovoltaic windows intend to not only improve thethermal bridge that windows represent but also to collect energy from theradiation incident on the windows themselves. This kind of windows can beapplied anywhere, however to maximize the benefit these can bring it isrecommended for sun-oriented façades. This research aims to investigate theimpacts that this type of windows can have on the energy performance andthermal comfort of a three-story historical stone building in the cold climateof Sweden using the simulation software IDA ICE. The model used for thesimulations had previously been developed and tested in other researches thatinvolved this same building. This research shows that the yearly energyconsumption for the townhall can be reduced down to 280000 kWh,representing a reduction of 5000 kWh compared to the base model, if theHigh transparency windows are applied, representing a reduction of 1,7%.The use of any of the four proposed windows has shown to increase thepercentage of best comfort hours by at least 5% and lowers the percentage ofunacceptable comfort hours at least by a 10%, even having cases with 0 hoursat this comfort level. The upper level of the South façade would be able toprovide the building with 800 kWh yearly, being the level with the highestenergy collection due to having more windows. Approximately every windowcould collect around 90 kWh yearly, which represents 20% of what a solarpanel of the same area correctly oriented could obtain in the same period oftime. Thus, the amorphous silicon photovoltaic windows do not seem to bethe best change despite offering a very promising thermal comfort. Theeconomical viability of this project is what prevents it from being feasiblesince the energy saving/obtaining characteristics are not of great magnitude.