Shortening supply of strategic raw materials (mostly oil and gas) and increasing demand for these energy raw materials in fast-growing Asian economies caused EU to put energy security among its top interests. The key goal of this thesis is to propose possibilities to increase energy security of the EU so that Europe has continuous and stable energy supplies both from its own sources and from import. I will analyze the current state of EU energy security in the first part of the thesis. I will focus on using EU's own resources and assess the benefits and drawbacks of using renewable energy sources compared to traditional sources. Then I will analyze dependency of EU on energy import and describe particularities and risks of current suppliers. The second part of the thesis will be focused on increasing energy security of the EU. Could the common energetic policy strengthen the energy security? I will also focus on possibilities of supplier and energy sources diversification. Last but not least, I will examine the topic of energetic savings and its impact on energy security.

This thesis examines Chinese foreign direct investments in Sub-Saharan Africa and their influence on Chinese foreign policy on the continent between the years 2004 and 2010. It is often believed that oil and raw materials are the principal determinants of Chinese investments in Africa. However, this research suggests that even though there exists strong correlation between the existence of reserves of raw materials and FDI distribution, such motivation is not the only one. Pragmatism, manifested by the Chinese government in FDI allocation, can lead the People's Republic to invest in controversial countries with bad governance like Sudan. China is then forced to keep closer relations with such countries and thus promote their stability to protect its investments. Tools of such efforts include foreign policy, closer cooperation on multilateral level, which includes establishment of Forum on China-Africa Cooperation, and foreign aid.

This diploma thesis deals with the preparation binder systems based on Portland clinker and recycled brick. Recycled brick is considered a waste material from construction or production of brick products. This thesis uses finely grounded brick recycled and brick dust, which is produced during final processing of burnt bricks. By incorporating brick dust in alternative system based on Portland clinker could bring ecological and economic benefits. This diploma thesis deals with option using brick dust as pozzolan admixture to Portland clinker, with the aim to prepare and test Portland cement, which is defined in v ČSN EN 197-1. This thesis also deals with possibility preparation of alternative binders based on p-clinker, but those not defined by ČSN EN 197-1. Specifically these are ternary binders with fluid bed ash and binders based on hybrid cements containing sodium sulfate.

Energy is considered as the foremost significant factor towards socio-economic growth. Due to the rapid growth of industrialization in Bangladesh, the need of energy is increasing day by day. Considering the environmental issues, sustainable solutions are needed to address the energy crisis. Energy generation from waste through biogas can be a good solution that can address both the energy demand as well as the waste management issue.    The overall aim of this master thesis is to analyze Hazaribagh’s biogas potential from municipal waste and agricultural residues and estimate how much electricity that can be generated from the produced biogas. The feasible sources of Hazaribagh were considered in order to get the information that would be later on analyzed to estimate possible biogas production. The potential sources include wastes from two markets, six slaughterhouses, domestic wastes, three large-scale tanneries and two small scale tanneries, one poultry farm and three crop lands. The calculations made in this thesis to roughly estimate the amount of biogas and electricity from the described sources are done in a simple way, just to illustrate the potential. The result shows that the tannery waste has the highest potential followed by slaughterhouse waste. Furthermore, the calculations show that the tannery waste contributes most for electricity generation also followed by slaughterhouse waste. In order to implement biogas solutions, several actors should be involved like government, future owners, local people etc. Different tools like legislation, financial support etc. are also important for implementing the biogas solutions.   In summary, there is a good potentiality of biogas production and electricity generation from municipal wastes and agricultural residues of Hazaribagh. Biogas solutions from waste and agricultural residues can be beneficial from both the energy and the waste management perspective.

Der Bericht beschreibt ein neues, flexibles und deutschlandweit einmaliges Bewertungsinstrument für die Rohstoffe Steine und Erden sowie Braunkohle. Es ermöglicht, die sächsischen Braunkohlen nach unterschiedlichen Kriterien miteinander zu vergleichen und ihre Eignung für eine stoffliche Veredlung oder eine energetische Nutzung zu beurteilen. Mit Hilfe der Rohstoffbewertung können die Bau- und Sicherungswürdigkeit von Steine- und Erden sowie Braunkohlenvorkommen berechnet und kartografisch dargestellt werden. Durch die Variabilität der Bewertungsparameter und durch räumliche Auswahlmöglichkeiten sind verschiedene Betrachtungsvarianten möglich.

The thesis deals with the development of new type of lightweight floors based on secondary raw materials. In the introduction, the current knowledge in the field of lightweight building materials, especially screeds and lightweight porous concrete, is presented. The thesis describes brief history of production of aerated concrete and its development up to the present. Further, the thesis describes the procedure of design and testing of new lightweight materials for use in floors. The proposed recipe has been thoroughly tested and the best combination of components for use in lightweight porous concrete floor screed has been selected. The thesis also examines the microstructure of the material being developed. The main result of the dissertation is the developed product, which is already used in practice and is produced and sold on the market as part of the system of lightweight building materials.

In the current context of the energy transition, it has been argued by researchers and authors that the demand for raw materials for the necessary green technologies can’t be met without the input of primary raw materials. These materials can only be supplied through the mining cycle: exploration, mining, and processing. The mining cycle, however, can pose risks to the environment, which could be in contradiction with the motivation behind the implementation of green technologies. It is then society’s duty to strive for a constant reduction of the environmental impact of the mining cycle, or else, we would be in a paradoxical situation where, by mining materials to power the energy transition, if not done with care, we could be also risking the environment.  While this megatrend of the energy transition occurs, Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) also known as drones, have reached a significant level of development which together with the miniaturization of geoscientific sensors, has opened the door to interesting fast, agile, and non-invasive ways of obtaining geological information. This has bridged gaps between the traditional scales of airborne and ground surveying and holds the potential of contributing to a less environmentally harmful mining cycle.  This thesis work intends to be a useful reference for anyone interested in working with UAVs in geosciences, especially for the exploration and management of raw materials from an entrepreneurial point of view. Here, a brief review of the current state of the art through the recent scientific literature on applications of drones in the mining cycle, including but not limited to geophysics and hyperspectral imaging is presented. Using this state of the art as a point of departure, semi-structured interviews with different stakeholders in the mining cycle were conducted to answer the research questions. The concept of value, ubiquitously present in the business research literature, was used to analyze the benefits that the use of UAVs can bring to the raw materials industry and the efforts to reduce its environmental footprint. The opportunities for entrepreneurs to be the conduit to deploy such benefits in society were also analyzed.  The work ends with a summary of the qualitative research findings, highlighting how drones constitute an optimization tool that can be used in all the stages of the mining cycle. Additionally, it highlights that UAV gravity and electromagnetic methods, together with better data processing software for hyperspectral imaging, are currently some of the most sought out and/or needed solutions by users.

The Swedish government has set a goal to have zero net greenhouse gas emissions by 2045 andto reduce emissions from domestic transport by at least 70% compared to 2010 levels by 2030.To achieve this, an expansion of the Swedish electric vehicle (EV) personal car fleet is needed.This scientific paper utilizes material flow analysis (MFA) to predict this expansion and thecorresponding demand for battery raw materials in Sweden, examining the growth trajectory ofthe EV market in Sweden and its implications going forward. The study concluded that themarket share of electric vehicles in Sweden will increase significantly in the next ten years,which will lead to a rise in the need for battery raw materials. Depending on possiblebreakthroughs in battery technology, these demands will vary. Given the rising demand for rawmaterials and the high environmental costs associated with mining new minerals, it is importantto underscore the importance of battery recycling as an essential component of sustainablemobility. This highlights the need to improve recycling practices.

The mining industry generates billions of tonnes of waste annually, which is often stored in tailings storage facilities (TSF). This waste is generated from the extraction of ore from surface or underground mines, as well as from metallurgical processing and low-grade stockpiles. TSF can have significant environmental impacts, as they can cause acid mine drainage resulting in the leaching and transport of heavy metals into ground and surface waters. With increasing demand for critical raw material, recent studies have shown that the valorisation of mine waste can be a potential secondary source of critical raw materials. The valorisation of mine waste is possible when the waste is accurately characterised.A novel method that uses multispectral satellite remote sensing and machine learning to estimate the mineral resource in a defunct TSF in the Witwatersrand Basin, South Africa is proposed in this research. Four machine learning models: 1) random forest (RF); 2) adaptive boosting (AB); 3) extra trees (ET); and 4) k-nearest neighbours are developed using supervised machine learning. The models are trained using training data acquired from a TSF with known gold concentration located 3 kilometres from the TSF and deployed on the TSF to predict the gold grades. The results of the machine learning model predictions indicates that machine learning models had high performances for predicting gold grades in the TSF. The AB, RF and ET, models performed best. Their performances were evaluated using the coefficient of determination (R2) value. The R2 values for the machine learning models were 0.95, 0.92, 0.87 and 0.70 for AB, ET, RF and kNN respectively. The mean gold grade predicted was 0.44 g/t by all machine learning models. This was compared to a 2D surficial geostatistical model which estimated 0.35g/t gold in the TSF using ordinary kriging and a 2D vertically averaged geostatistical model with an estimated 0.4 g/t mean gold grade. The short-wave infrared (SWIR) - band 11 at a 20 m spatial resolution had the highest correlation with the reflectance of gold in the TSF. This study demonstrated the value of leveraging multi-spectral remote sensing data and machine learning to perform mineral resource estimation in defunct TSF.

Construction is a very dynamically developing industry that is placing ever greater demands on the properties of used building materials and structures built on them. In this context, there is a long-term trend to use construction materials made from natural quickly renewable raw materials. These tendencies are caused by natural reaction to the overly technological modern society, as well as efforts towards a greener approach in construction. In this sense, the natural materials from renewable sources means technologically processed organic material of plant origin. Dissertation focuses on the research and subsequent development of filling materials for vertical and horizontal structures based on quickly renewable materials. Pivotal quickly renewable raw material used in the production of filling material is technical hemp. Technical hemp is quickly renewable raw material with very good properties very similar to wood. Furthermore, the research focused on secondary raw materials, which partly replace the binder of the filling material. The resulting filling material has good physical-mechanical and thermo-technical characteristics.