National access to modern energy is deemed by Malawi government as the driving force to attain social-economic development. To achieve this, optimal decisions in energy planning and investment are considered important. This study evaluates potential pathways that will inform better policy design and investment option in energy sector. The Integrated Assessment Modelling method has been used to integrate social, economic and environmental variables that affect energy systems, and further analyses potential energy pathways in relation to these earth systems. The Long-range Alternatives Energy Planning system (LEAP) has been used to run a continuous time series from 2008 to 2063 of the three energy policy pathways (scenarios) using: (1) the current Malawi National Policy and Strategies on Energy (MwNEP) (2) the United Nation’s Sustainable Energy for All strategy (SE4ALL) and (3) Business as Usual (REF) scenario. The analysis indicates an exponential growth in energy demand for both MwNEP and SE4ALL scenario with a slight higher demand in SEAll over MwNEP Scenario. In both cases Biomass remains an important energy source beyond the 2030. Thus, the SDG 7 will not be achieved by 2030. Similarly, energy demand trends in MwNEP and SE4ALL scenarios continue to grow beyond available energy stocks and generation capacity which will lead to a shortfall in energy supply. Environmentally, the GHGs emissions in MwNEP are higher than the SE4ALL scenario. This is reflected in the pro-environment policy objective pursued by SE4ALL scenario. In the medium-term LEAP analysis favours advancement of alternative renewable energies at household level like solar photovoltaic (PV) for lighting and sustainable biomass energy for cooking. In the long-run, scaling up the adoption of renewable energy in form of solar, wind and hydro-electricity to meet the energy gap. At the same time, designing and adhering to implementation of sustainable energy plans that cuts energy sources from fossil fuels and allow easy accesses to affordable renewable energies will result in a success of Malawi’s energy system.

The Urban Freight Transportation System faces many uncertainties and challenges in its future development. In the discussion regarding how to mitigate the challenges, the implementation of Urban Hubs is often brought up. However, most of the literature that exists within the field focuses on the logistic system as a whole, rather than the actual hubs specifically. The research gap regarding how Urban Hubs should be designed in order to be efficient with regards to multiple future scenarios, but also easy to adapt once so is needed, has been targeted throughout this study. The importance of robustness and adaptiveness has been underlined, and these concepts have in turn been linked to modularization, and the use of future scenario frameworks, respectively. This study has resulted in a proposed framework for constructing robust Urban Hubs, which was obtained by adapting a modularization framework, and integrating a future scenario framework for Urban Freight Transportation. The proposed framework has an extensive evaluation process, incorporating both Customer Values and future scenarios in the metrics, thus shedding extra light on this part of the construction process. The proposed framework was also tested in the study, through constructing and evaluating four different hub configurations, spanning from small to large, in order to determine which hub that performed best in the largest number of scenarios. The evaluation results could in turn contribute with indications as to what characterizes such a Hub configuration. In order to be able to construct the proposed framework, an understanding of Urban Hubs' layouts, functionalities included, and flow of goods, had to be obtained. This was done through conducting interviews with relevant stakeholders connected to Swedish Urban Hubs. Through the interviews, similarities and differences between Swedish Urban Hubs could be identified, thereby describing how the Swedish Urban Hub landscape looks today. Since the literature describing Urban Hubs is scarce, the study thus contributes towards filling that research gap as well. / Hållbara urbana godstransportssystem står inför många osäkerheter och utmaningar under sin fortsatta utveckling. I diskussionen kring hur dessa utmaningar ska kunna mildras, nämns ofta implementationen av Urbana Hubbar. Den existerande litteraturen inom området fokuserar dock mest på hela logistiksystemet, snarare än de Urbana Hubbarna specifikt. Avsaknaden inom forskningen vad gäller hur Urbana Hubbar bör bli designade i syfte att både vara robusta med avseende på flera olika framtidsscenarion och samtidigt även lätt kunna anpassas när så krävs, är vad denna studie har syftat till att undersöka. Vikten av både robusthet och möjligheten att anpassa sig har blivit underbyggd i studien, och koncepten har i sin tur kopplats till modularisering, respektive användandet av ramverk för framtidsscenarion. Studien resulterade i ett föreslaget ramverk för att konstruera robusta Urbana Hubbar, vilket erhölls genom att anpassa ett modulariseringsramverk, och integrera det tillsammans med ett ramverk för framtidsscenarion inom Urbana Godstransporter. Det föreslagna ramverket innefattar en omfattande evalueringsprocess, som både har integrerat Kundvärden och scenariospecifika parametrar i sina mått, och därmed tydligt visar på vikten av denna del under konstruktionsprocessen.  Det föreslagna ramverket testades dessutom i studien, genom att kontruera och utvärdera fyra olika hubbkonfigurationer, som tillsammans spände upp en rymd från mindre konfigurationer till större, mer komplexa varianter. Detta för att kunna fastställa vilken av dem som presterade bäst i flest scenarion. Resultaten från utvärderingen kunde i sin tur bidra med indikationer på vad som karaktäriserar en sådan hubbkonfiguration. För att kunna konstruera det föreslagna ramverket, krävdes djup förståelse för Urbana Hubbars layout, vilka funktionaliteter de innefattar, samt hur processflödet inuti hubbarna går till. Detta erhölls genom intervjuer med relevanta aktörer som var kopplade till svenska Urbana Hubbar. Genom intervjuerna kunde likheter och skillnader mellan svenska Urbana Hubbar identifieras, och från det kunde en kartläggning över svenska Urbana Hubbar göras. Eftersom litteraturen som beskriver Urbana Hubbar är knapp, bidrar studien dämred även till att fylla det forskningsgapet inom området.