Search

The use of strategic visions based on concepts like climate-neutrality, net-zero emissions and energy efficiency is important to align action and build momentum. The agency of transition actors requires clear definitions and explanations of visions, enabling operationalization for action, monitoring and measuring of results. This paper develops a maturity scale for climate-related strategic visions among local governments. Further, the maturity of Swedish municipalities’ climate-related strategic visions is reviewed. The results show that out of Sweden’s 290 municipalities, 256 shows overall low maturity in their strategic visions, not supporting their local, regional and national system actors sufficiently. Furthermore, results from workshops indicate that the roles, mandate and process for working with municipal strategic visions are not clear. There is an ambiguity around visions that is hindering aligned action and progress.

Due to desirable emission reductions and population growth, increasing energy demand is identified as a dire issue for energy systems. The introduction of low-energy building districts enables increased energy system efficiency. This study’s aim is twofold. Firstly, an extensive urban building energy model is used to simulate the hourly use and geographic distribution of the heat demand for residential and commercial buildings that are to be supplied by a low-temperature district heating system. The simulated buildings are a part of a planned city district, located in Gävle, Sweden. Two building energy performance cases are studied; one where all buildings are assumed to be of Passive House standard, and one where the building energy performance is in line with conventional new-building regulations in Sweden. Secondly, one specific building is modeled in detail and simulated in the building energy simulation software IDA ICE to investigate what building heating system is best suited for low-temperature heat supply. The temperature demands of floor heating and ventilation with heat recovery are investigated and compared to conventional water-based radiators. The building’s temperature demand results can be used when designing a low-tempered district heating system which will provide the supply temperature to identify a compatible heating system technique. Varying supply temperature demand will enable optimization for choosing building heating systems and consequently, possible cost reductions. The results could be used as an example for future city district planning as well as presenting relevant heating systems for low-temperature district heating.

In Europe, the prices of natural gas and electricity reached an all-time high in 2022. A way to mitigate high electricity costs is to expand district heating systems in urban areas, this will reduce electric load as well as increase the power generation possibilities in combined heat and power plants. District heating has been the dominant heat supply technology in urban areas in Sweden since the 1980s. However, as the energy efficiency in buildings increase, district heating distribution losses must be reduced to ensure a cost-efficient heat supply. This has led to the idea of the 4th generation district heating which is characterized by low distribution temperatures. In this study, low-temperature district heating distribution in a planned future city district is simulated using a Python-based tool. Two different low-temperature distribution systems are investigated: 1) 2-pipe low-temperature system, and 2) a cascading 3-pipe low-temperature system. The focus is on simulating the distribution losses, temperature drop, and mass flow in the pipe network. The scope of the analysis also includes an investigation of the effect of lower return temperatures on the central district heating network. The results indicate that the low-temperature distribution system with the 2-pipe system performs better than the cascading system when considering distribution losses and temperature drop. The mass flow depends on the temperature demand in the heating systems in the buildings and is considerably high for both low-temperature distribution systems investigated.

Large shares of variable renewable electricity (VRE) generation increase the demand for flexible power balancing capacities for handling power surpluses and deficits. Within district heating (DH) production systems, electricity can be produced in combined heat and power (CHP) plants but also consumed in heat pumps, and thus contribute with balancing capacity. However, this power balancing potential in DH production units is limited by heat load variations. To improve the potential, large-scale thermal energy storage (TES) can be used to increase heat-load flexibility. This study investigates the power balancing capacity of 85 existing Swedish DH systems, with hypothetical access to rock cavern oil depots assumed to have been converted into TES units. In the study, the Swedish power load is assumed to be covered by 60 % wind and 10 % solar power. The results show that Swedish DH systems, on a national scale, could reduce power deficits and surpluses by approximately 9 % respectively. There will be competition between heat pumps and CHP units for DH load supply while providing power balancing services. The use of heat pumps could also, on national level, yield a reduced fuel use in DH production by about 10 % when compared to conventional DH system operation. The study highlights the impact the temporal distribution and annual shares of VRE surpluses and deficits have on the fuel use.

Due to desirable emission reductions and population growth, increasing energy demand is identified as a dire issue for energy systems. The introduction of low-energy building districts enables increased energy system efficiency. This study’s aim is twofold. Firstly, an extensive urban building energy model is used to simulate the hourly use and geographic distribution of the heat demand for residential and commercial buildings that are to be supplied by a low-temperature district heating system. The simulated buildings are a part of a planned city district, located in Gävle, Sweden. Two building energy performance cases are studied; one where all buildings are assumed to be of Passive House standard, and one where the building energy performance is in line with conventional new-building regulations in Sweden. Secondly, one specific building is modeled in detail and simulated in the building energy simulation software IDA ICE to investigate what building heating system is best suited for low-temperature heat supply. The temperature demands of floor heating and ventilation with heat recovery are investigated and compared to conventional water-based radiators. The building’s temperature demand results can be used when designing a lowtempered district heating system which will provide the supply temperature to identify a compatible heating system technique. Varying supply temperature demand will enable optimization for choosing building heating systems and consequently, possible cost reductions. The results could be used as an example for future city district planning as well as presenting relevant heating systems for low-temperature district heating.

Energy communities (ECs) is a concept which has been around for decades in various forms, but which has not been explicitly defined or regulated by policymakers until the introduction of the Clean Energy for all Europeans package in 2019. Since then, the EU provides a legal framework for ECs which will guide the creation and management of ECs within member states. From a policy perspective, an EC is regarded as a way to organize collective energy actions in an open and participatory way to provide benefits for members of local communities and opportunities for citizens to get engaged with the transformation of the energy system. In a broad sense, the aim is formulated in terms of enabling a transition towards a "clean and fair” energy system. The policy aspirations for ECs seem to be many and diverse, including technical, economic, social and organizational, referring to a set of different values such as effective use of resources, social equity, and ecological sustainability. In technical and economic terms, EC's are supposed to enable clusters of actors to collectively invest in technology for renewable energy systems and share coordination benefits of more diverse energy use patterns, energy storage solutions and production units. Socially, ECs are expected to increase the acceptance of and support for the transition towards a renewable energy system by involving and empowering citizens, thereby helping to address issues such as poverty, social equity and “energy segregation”. Moreover, within the EU policy discourse, ECs are conceived as policy instruments for implementing EU’s energy goals, as actors on energy markets and as a part of civil society and local communities at the same time. Evidently, ECs are expected to produce a multitude of societal benefits, but the extent to which these policy aspirations are heard and translated into practice remains unclear. In this paper, we present a mapping of how the concept of ECs is understood and reported in the rese

Studies have shown that surplus power from variable renewable electricity generation can be consumed in electric boilers or compressor heat pumps, i.e., Power-to-Heat (P2H), for heat production. This potentially provides power balancing for the electric grid and can also decarbonize and/or reduce biofuel demand in the district heating (DH) sector. This sector-coupling of thermal and electrical systems is, how-ever, limited by production planning complexity, grid fees, tariffs, and risk-averse actors. The conditions for P2H production vary between DH-systems due to non-homogeneity in the configuration of production units in different systems. This study investigates the economic feasibility of placing bids for P2H electricity consumption on the reserve capacity market in three different DH systems. It is assumed that P2H electricity consumption is controlled by a hypothetical balance operator. To increase production flexibility, the DH systems are equipped with heat storage where P2H-produced heat is stored. The results show that P2H on the reserve capacity market can increase revenue for DH operators, but DH systems with co-generation of heat and electricity risk reducing income from power production. Furthermore, stored heat needs to compete with cost-efficient base-load production to avoid the large storage required. The power balancing potential of P2H in DH systems is generally limited by the installed P2H capacity as well as the rest of the constituents and the production strategy of the DH system. To overcome these limitations, policies are needed that reward power balancing services and provide investment support for P2H capacity and heat storage. Published under an exclusive license by AIP Publishing.

The European Commission has, following the Paris Agreement, announced a “European Green Deal” to decarbonize energy sectors and increase renewable power. This study investigates to what extent district heating systems with biomass-fueled combined heat and power, electricity-driven compression heat pumps, and pit thermal energy storages, can contribute to power balancing capacity in a future Swedish power system with a high share of variable renewable electricity production. District heat production is, in this study, unconventionally controlled to primarily supply a power balancing demand, where co-produced heat is stored if not directly supplied to district heating users. The impact of this on biomass demand is also investigated. Simulations are made on an aggregated level for one part of the Swedish electricity market. The results show that district heating systems have the potential to reduce peak variable renewable power deficits by up to 52%. All power surpluses can potentially be used for heat production in heat pumps. A heat storage capacity of 17-18% of the heat demand is necessary. Fuel use is 11-12% higher for district heating production controlled for power balancing compared to conventional heat production, depending on the mix of renewable power generation technologies. For instance, a large share of solar power in relation to wind power reduces fuel use to a greater extent when compared to the opposite relation.

DNA adductomics is a relatively new omics approach aiming to measure known and unknown DNA modifications, called DNA adducts. Liquid chromatography–tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) has become the most common method for analyzing DNA adducts. Recent advances in the field of mass spectrometry have allowed the possibility to perform a comprehensive analysis of adducts, for instance, by using a nontargeted data-independent acquisition method, with multiple precursor m/z windows as an inclusion list. However, the generated data are large and complex, and there is a need to develop algorithms to simplify and automate the time-consuming manual analysis that has hitherto been used. Here, a graphical user interface (GUI) program was developed, with the purpose of tracking a characteristic neutral loss reaction from tandem mass spectrometry of the nucleoside adducts. This program, called nLossFinder, was developed in the MATLAB platform, available as open-source code. Calf thymus DNA was used as a model for method optimization, and the overall adductomics approach was applied to DNA from amphipods (Monoporeia affinis) collected within the Swedish National Marine Monitoring Program. In the amphipod DNA, over 150 putative adducts were found in comparison to 18 using a manual approach in a previous study. The developed program can improve the processing time for large MS data, as it processes each sample in a few seconds, and hence can be applicable for high-throughput screening of adducts.

Power systems with large shares of variable renewable electricity generation, i.e., wind and solar power, require high flexibility in both power generation and demand. Heat pumps and combined heat and power units within district heating systems and thermal storages have previously been studied for their potential to increase the flexibility of the energy system. When using these technologies for power balancing, they must be operated in a non-standard way with switched merit-order. This study hypothesizes that a residential area could form a locally operated entity, i.e., a virtual power plant, that provides power-balancing services to a national power system. The hypothesis is tested with a case study in Sweden where a combined heat and power unit, heat pumps, a local heat distribution system, and thermal storage constitute the local entity. A simulation of the energy balances in the system, with optimization of storage size, was performed. The results show that all power surpluses in the system are consumed by the heat pumps. 43% of the annual and 21% of the electricity peak load are covered by the combined heat and power unit. It is concluded that inter-seasonal thermal storage is crucial for the system’s flexibility. Also, large electricity surpluses, if converted to heat and stored, limit the ability of the virtual power plant to utilize the combined heat and power unit for power balancing at a later stage. Despite this, a local virtual power plant can provide increased flexibility by offering power-balancing services to the power system.

This study provides an analysis of the potential for a sub-energy system to provide an electricity balancing service to, in this case, a national energy system with a large share of variable renewable electricity generation. By comparing electricity balancing capacity, CO2, eq-emissions, and costs, three different local residential energy system setups are assessed. The setups contain different combinations of district heating, combined heat and power, thermal energy storage, electric battery storage, heat pumps, and electric boilers. The analysis focuses on system-level integration, heat and electricity cross-sectoral operations, and unconventional production strategies for district heating production. The results show that local sub-energy systems with heat pumps, combined heat and power, and thermal energy storage has the potential to reduce national electricity balancing demand in an economically feasible way, and with modest CO2, eq-emissions. It was also shown that electricity-based heat production without district heating is economically unfavourable, even in the most optimistic scenario; it is not likely to be feasible within a 30-year period.

Physical touch between educators and children in preschool settings is a sensitive issue in many countries. The aim of the study is to examine how future and newly graduated preschool teachers relate to touch between preschool teachers and children in the Swedish preschool context. The study was conducted using: 1) a questionnaire study (n = 204) and 2) semi-structured interviews (n = 20). The results illustrate the informants’ desire to combine physical care of children with awareness of and respect for children’s bodily integrity.

Kroppslig kontakt är ett vardagligt inslag i förskoleverksamhet. Fysisk beröring kan ske i situationer som blöjbyten, hälsnings- och avskedssituationer, för att avstyra bråk, för att förebygga olyckshändelser, för att ge tröst, likväl som i mer planerade lärandesituationer som till exempel massageaktiviteter eller rörelselekar. I sådana vardagliga situationer skapas och återskapas normerade gränser för vad som uppfattas som lämplig respektive olämplig beröring. Den här artikeln söker besvara två forskningsfrågor: 1) Hur konstrueras normer om beröring i förskollärares utsagor om vardagshändelser i förskolan? 2) Hur kan dessa utsagor förstås i relation till de normerade perspektiv på beröring som uttrycks genom förskolans och förskollärarutbildningens tidigare och samtida styrdokument? För att besvara forskningsfråga 1) har 40 semistrukturerade intervjuer genomförts med yrkesverksamma och blivande förskollärare. För forskningsfråga 2) har en dokumentanalys av förskolans och förskollärarutbildningens tidigare och samtida styrdokument genomförts. Studien visar att synen på den fysiska kontakten mellan förskollärare och barn har förändrats. Analysen av styrdokument visar att beröring under 1970-talet sågs som en pedagogisk resurs för lärarna, medan fokus idag i högre grad läggs på värnandet om barnens kroppsliga integritet. Hela denna spännvidd återfinns också i de synsätt på beröring som uttrycks av dagens nyutbildade och erfarna förskollärare.