Insight into industrial symbiosis and carbon metabolism from the evolution of iron and steel industrial network

Abstract

Industrial Symbiosis (IS) as an effective way to promote the sustainable development of industrial network has attracted extensive attention. Exploring the evolution of IS is crucial to present a dynamic perspective of IS. This paper highlights the drivers and the mechanism of policies on the evolution of IS as well as the environmental benefits of IS. A backward approach that provides comprehending on how industrial network emerged over time was used to analyze the sequences of IS in a typical case study of an iron and steel industrial network from 1958 to 2012. Results show that symbiotic links increased from 2 to 75 over time, with the average number of symbiotic links per entities from 1 to 3.26. The main guiding factors in the evolution of industrial symbiosis are not only the interests of enterprises and knowledge of industrial symbiosis, but also related policies and regulations. Industrial symbiosis can improve carbon metabolism efficiency and avoid pollutants emissions. Exchange-based IS can avoid more carbon dioxide emission (CO2) than the other pollutants, and energy exchanges had a greater contribution to pollutants emission reduction than the solid waste/byproduct exchanges. The network structure and the evolution of IS can be understood better through considering not only the inter-firm level and the regional or global level but also the intra-firm level.