Abstract
Industrial symbiosis (IS) has proven to bring collective benefits to multiple stakeholders by minimising underutilised resources, sharing knowledge and improving business and technical processes. In Europe alone, over €130 million have been invested since 2006 in research projects that enable IS by developing a methodology, tool, software, platform or network that facilitates the uptake of IS by different economic actors. This paper discusses and assesses information technology (IT) developments for supporting IS in Europe, following the five-stage methodology of Grant et al. (2010). It provides guidance to the applicants and reviewers of publicly funded research projects by listing the developments and gaps in the newly developed IT tools for IS. Content analysis of publicly available information on 20 IS supporting IT tools reveals a strong focus on synergy identification but a lack of support for the implementation stage of IS. The paper indicates that a vast quantity of IT tools and knowledge is created during the IT tool development stage and newer IT tools now also include implicit information for identifying IS. It was found that successfully operational IT tools are either part of a national or local IS programme or owned by a private company. The paper ends with the recommendation that better mechanisms are needed to ensure that publicly funded IS-supporting IT tools successfully reach the market.
Highlights
Optimisation of industrial sites through efficiency gains, carbon and energy savings and the use of renewable energy sources is a starting point to decouple economic growth from environmental degradation
The results show that 12 information technology (IT) tools have their main objective in the stage of synergy identification, with a prevalent commitment to matchmaking (48 points out of 60)
This paper shows that more IT tools are being developed for use by industries that are referred to as participants by Grant et al (2010) [33]
Summary
Optimisation of industrial sites through efficiency gains, carbon and energy savings and the use of renewable energy sources is a starting point to decouple economic growth from environmental degradation. The system boundaries can be widened to include other industries, process sectors and neighbouring municipalities to collectively strive for resource and energy efficiency and, aim for a circular economy This cooperative management of resource flows between businesses and engagement of traditionally separate entities in a collective approach to competitive advantage is termed as industrial symbiosis (IS) [1,2]. It involves physical exchanges of materials, energy, water and by-products, as well as sharing social tactics at the firm and multiorganisational level [3]. IS is a crosscutting field that has relevance for policies relating to resource efficiency, the low carbon and circular economy, eco-innovation, green growth, regional economic development [8] and many more [9,10,11,12,13,14]
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