Jonas Ammenberg

Biofuels – implementation of resource efficient biogas solutions

My research is to a large extent focused on biofuels and biogas in particular. It is conducted within Biogas Research Center (BRC), which is a center of excellence for which I am one of the founders. Connected to BRC there are researchers with many different areas of competence and the research is conducted in cooperation with the participating companies, sector organizations and municipalities. I am mainly involved in a research project where we study the resource efficiency of different biogas solutions with a broad systems perspective.

The Swedish biogas potential is great but far from implemented, where an important explanation is that existing producers face several types of challenges and the investment landscape is uncertain. Considering future development within the biogas sector it is important to gather and structure relevant information about different existing and potential biogas solutions, for example, in different contexts with varying purposes; involving a variety of feedstock and technology. A central precondition for different biogas solutions future development regards to what extent they are seen as resource efficient by customers, politicians and others.

Systems research can play an important role here by specifying what resource efficiency means and in various ways analyse and visualise aspects of feasibility and resource efficiency. An important contribution is to structure information and present it in a way that facilitates overview and informed decision making.

Industrial Symbiosis for improved business and environmental performance

The industrial symbiosis research can be used to find more resource efficient solutions achieved by long term cooperation among local and regional actors. This can enable smart solutions involving more efficient use of materials, energy and other types of resources, resulting in improved business and environmental performance.

Industrial symbiosis is a good platform for research about biofuels/biogas. I have also studied the relevance of industrial symbiosis within the cement industry, in cooperation with CEMEX which is one of the largest cement producing companies in the world. Among other things, we compared the climate performance for different ways of producing cement.

Corporate environmental management, including environmental management systems

Another area of interest is corporate environmental management (CEM), for example, dealing with how companies’ operations and strategies influence their environmental performance. I have written the book Miljömanagement, which is used at several Swedish universities within CEM courses. It contributes to knowledge about important conditions, strategies and methods for companies’ environmental and sustainability work.

I am very interested in different types of corporate environmental strategies and factors influencing how companies choose to act – i.e. to study opportunities, drivers and barriers for change in a sustainable direction. Here I have relevant industrial experiences from 6 years as an environmental consultant.

My PhD thesis dealt with environmental management systems in accordance with ISO 14001 and EMAS, where I in different ways studied if such systems influenced companies’ environmental performance. The focus was on important factors deciding to what extent environmental management systems contribute to effective environmental work.