Application open for our new courses in sustainable energy and transport systems
Curious about how current energy and transport systems can be transformed to full sustainability? The SustainTrans team offers in late fall and early spring 7,5 credit distance courses in English about how to achieve a sustainable energy and transport systems that can comply with principles for a social, ecological, and economical sustainable future. Link to further description of the sustainable energy course and the sustainable transport course and other open sustainability courses offered by the TISU department.
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“Sustainable transport is urgent – but possible and affordable”
Dr. Henrik Ny, at the Department of Strategic Sustainable Development at Blekinge Institute of Technology
Read more about how this can be achieved in the English summary report or in the main report page (in Swedish).
Projects
Education for sustainability
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– Are you interested to learn more about transitions to full sustainability?
Our team is involved in, and responsible for, several courses open for international students at BTH. Below is an excerpt of these courses where strategic sustainable development is the core theme.
From late fall 2020, we have the pleasure to offer a distance course in English about sustainable energy systems. The aim of the course is to develop the student’s knowledge and understanding of current energy systems, their sustainability consequences, and how they can be transformed strategically to sustainability. Some previous knowledge about strategic sustainable development is required, as well as earlier university studies.
The SustainTrans team offers a new distance course in English about how can we transform to sustainable transport system based on renewable sources and efficient use of energy carriers that can comply with principles for a social, ecological, and economical sustainable future. The course runs in 2021 between 18th of January and 28th of March on 50% and requires some previous knowledge about strategic sustainable development.
Welcome to apply via universityadmissions.se
Foundations for Strategic Sustainable development, 7,5 cr
In early fall and early spring, we and colleagues at the TISU department offer 7,5 credit distance courses in English about introduction to strategic sustainable development. The hybrid course SL2545 combines distance and BTH-campus learning, and runs in parallell with the distance course SL2539. This is a great opportunity to learn about the framework for strategic sustainable development (FSSD), principles that defines sustainability, and the ABCD-approach to guide planning towards sustainability.
Green Transition Strategist, 2×7,5 cr
This certificate program is for early to mid-career professionals who have been partly or fully laid off in the tourism and manufacturing industries, and/or for people who have an interest in supporting these sectors in the transition. It comprised of two distance courses (7,5 ECTS each), and are given online from January to June 2021 at 50% speed. The first course is about understanding green and sustainable transitions explores key sustainability challenges and the underlying drivers of the current societal and ecological problems. The second course builds on the first and focuses on how to instigate and navigate these transitions, both in an organizational and sectoral context.
Strategic Leadership towards Sustainability, 60 cr
The TISU department hosts a 1-year international master’s program in English on BTH campus about strategic leadership towards sustainability. This is highly recommended for anyone with a bachelor degree who would like to know more about how to support a transition to global sustainability by creating and implementing economically beneficial development of products, systems, organisations and societies.
Environmental Management, 7,5 cr
This distance course runs in late spring on 50% in Swedish. The aim is to provide basic and broad knowledge in the area of environmental management and to develop student’s ability to identify and strategically address primarily ecological aspects, and to some extent also social aspects, from the implementation of selected parts of an environmental management system in companies and other organizations.
Our research team
We are a research team within the research area of Strategic Sustainable Development at the TISU department within Blekinge Institute of Technology. Guided by the framework for strategic sustainable development (FSSD), our research is focusing on accelerated transformation of energy and transport systems towards sustainability.
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Publications
This paper reveals a process for how rapid scenario planning can support a regional sustainability transformation. Read more about the paper through this link.
Total Cost of Ownership Model and Significant Cost Parameters for the Design of Electric Bus Systems
The 3rd paper in the electric bus study has after four years of work been completed by Anders Grauers at Chalmers, SustainTrans member Sven Borén, and Oscar Enerbäck at RISE.
Written by Jyane Bryant and Giles Thomson and published in Sustainability Science in 2020, this paper presents a case study about embedding sustainability into a local government in Perth, Western Australia, through the introduction of a sustainability policy and the accompanying education and culture change program. Read more about the paper.
This report is a summary of a project conducted in 2019 about finding Challenges and Opportunities for shipping at large and Wallenius Marine towards sustainability.
This paper by Sven Borén published in the International Journal of Sustainable Transportation (2019) describes how significant savings in societal costs and total cost of ownership when electric buses were compared to diesel and biogas powered buses, mainly due to decreased noise, no emissions in the use phase, and decreased energy use.
Highlights of this paper written by Varvara Nikulina et al. (2019):
A conceptual framework for analysing complexity of transdisciplinary co-production settings with regards to three aspects.
• Selected aspects: epistemic communities, linguistic diversity, culture.
• Some aspects that a process leader/facilitator would likely need to deal with when preparing for a co-production process.
• Linguistic equality, disciplinary integrity, culture of mutual respect, simultaneous mitigation, informed facilitation.
The paper work primarily developed two stakeholder collaboration models, suggesting that charging infrastructure should be designed separately from the common procurement process. In these models, energy companies, electric grid owners, charging infrastructure operators, regional public transport authorities, and municipalities need to collaborate. The first model is designed for a system that includes chargers at certain locations along a route and/or stakeholders with a low level of experience of electric bus systems, while the second is designed for a system that includes bus charging at the depot and/or stakeholders with a high level of experience of electric bus systems.
This licentiate thesis by Varvara Nikulina was defended the 25th of January 2019 at Blekinge Institute of Technology. The overall conclusion is that there is a need for research that would show how mobility actors can contribute to resolve pressing issues related to climate change fast enough without compromising other aspects of sustainability, including how temporary trade-offs can be addressed in a strategic way.
This PhD thesis Sven Borén was defended the 18th of October at Blekinge Institute of Technology. It revealed if, and then how, electric vehicles (primarily electric cars and buses) can contribute to a sustainable development. Click this link to read more about it.
This roadmap report aims to investigate how electric vehicle systems can contribute to a faster transition to sustainable passenger transport in Southeast Sweden, as well as to present a methodology for guidance of similar work for faster transitions in other regions and sectors.
Here you can find this English short version of this report – with a foreword by Peter Newman from the IPCC.
Please read in the attached poster about how Varvara in her research has identified gaps in sustainable mobility planning guidelines from a sustainability principle point of view.
Rapportens resultat visar att dagens fokus på fossilfrihet och klimatåtgärder måste breddas till hela hållbarhetsfrågan så att även andra hållbarhetsproblem adresseras och så att inte lösningar på vissa hållbarhetsproblem skapar nya. Rapporten tydliggör också att det är nödvändigt, praktiskt möjligt och ekonomiskt fördelaktigt för Sydostregionen att göra en snabbare hållbarhetsomställning av persontransporterna än vad som har föreslagits i tidigare studier och utredningar.
- Gasoline car causes the most emissions from its manufacturing and use phases.
- Local jobs from renewables give positive contribution to social sustainability.
- Renewable electricity in electric carpool cause least socio-ecological impact.
- Car Pooling is more cost-effective for those who drive from 2000 to 8500 km.
- People travel less than 13,500 km/year should not consider owning a car.
… a preliminary sustainability vision for EV systems in southeast of Sweden.
… an initial development plan for road transport towards sustainability.
… a validation of the four planning perspectives and the iterative process suggested in paper 1.
… an iterative planning process for cross-sector community cooperation,
… four planning perspectives to ensure quality and anchoring of the process results,
… validation via a case study about sustainability visioning for EV’s, and
… usefulness of the approach for sustainable community planning beyond transport.
Contact
Our main contact point is henrik.ny(at)bth.se and/or telephone +46455385500
We are located at BTH campus at the beautiful naval town Karlskrona, about 3 hours from Copenhagen by train, and 2 hour flight from Stockholm via Ronneby airport, and 8 hours ferry trip from Gdansk in Poland. Please check BTH website for further guidance, and the local public transport Blekingetrafiken or ’Resrobot’ to arrive in a convenient and environmental friendly way.
Arriving with an electric car? 
There are several fast charging facilities for different cars along the E22
and national roads leading towards Karlskrona from Stockholm, Gothenburg and Malmö/Copenhagen. Find the most recent information about charging locations on the website ’uppladdning.nu’.
