21. A Cross-Sectorial Synergies Identification Methodology for Industrial Symbiosis

Circular economy is the model the European Union opted for to make its production and consumption system more sustainable. Industrial symbiosis is one of its operational implementation strategies. This concept aims at redesigning industries supply chains by creating new interconnections between traditionally independent chains, new sources of raw materials and new market opportunities for wasted resources. This paper introduces an innovative methodology, developed within the SCALER project that aims at facilitating substitution synergies identification between cross-sectorial supply chains. Synergy ideas are automatically generated thanks to dedicated algorithms performing matching queries on input and output data of 17 industrial sectors. Data is generic and collected from publicly available sources. The methodology’s deductive approach has the benefit of proposing relevant synergy ideas for industries without asking confidential operating data. A total of 1000 relevant synergies were already identified. Development perspectives are to reinforce the methodology with additional technical data sets such as treatment technologies, geolocated facilities databases and European economic activity/waste codes.