Elsevier

Journal of Cleaner Production

Volume 64, 1 February 2014, Pages 486-494
Journal of Cleaner Production

Study of the performance of eco-industrial park development in China

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2013.08.005Get rights and content

Highlights

  • We studied economic-environmental performance of 17 Chinese EIPs.

  • By applying 10 metrics on resource consuming, economics, and waste emission.

  • Chinese EIPs had robust improvement in economic and environmental performance.

  • COD and SO2 achieved great decrease both in emission quantity and in intensities.

  • Five key measures supporting the performance improvement of the EIPs.

Abstract

The Chinese national demonstration eco-industrial park program has received significant attentions in the field of industrial ecology. The program has just passed its ten-year anniversary. This study aims to assess the economic and environmental performance of the 17 accredited sector-integrated national demonstration eco-industrial parks. A selected group of ten metrics, including resource consumption, economic development, and waste emissions, are applied to assess the performance by comparing the difference of metrics between reference years of eco-industrial park planning and accreditation. The main findings include: (1) industrial added value of the 17 eco-industrial parks as a whole increased by 56%; (2) for comprehensive energy consumption, fresh water consumption, industrial wastewater generation, and solid waste production, the 17 eco-industrial parks had an overall increase of 20%, 18%, 12%, and 6%, respectively. The quantity of energy and fresh water consumption, wastewater and solid waste generation in some eco-industrial parks started to decrease with economic growth. Meanwhile, the average intensity of the four metrics decreased by 22%, 25%, 28%, and 32%, respectively; (3) for chemical oxygen demand and sulfur dioxide, the eco-industrial parks accomplished a two-fold decrease in both total quantity of emissions and intensity. Chemical oxygen demand emissions and its intensity decreased by 25% and 52%, respectively. Sulfur dioxide emissions and its intensity decreased by 51% and 69%m respectively. Measures supporting the performance improvement of Chinese national demonstration eco-industrial parks are also discussed, which mainly include cleaner production and environmental management, infrastructure sharing, energy-saving practices at the firm level, the pillar industries, and industrial symbiosis.

Introduction

Eco-industrial park (EIP) is one of the key research areas in industrial ecology (Chertow, 2000). According to the US EPA, “an eco-industrial park is a community of manufacturing and service businesses seeking enhanced environmental and economic performance through collaboration in managing environmental and resource issues including energy, water, and materials. By working together, the community of businesses seeks a collective benefit that is greater than the sum of the individual benefits each company would realize if it optimized its individual performance only” (recited from (Chertow, 2000)).

Many countries have quested EIP development, such as the US (Gibbs and Deutz, 2005), Netherlands (Heeres et al., 2004), UK (Mirata, 2004), Japan (Van Berkel et al., 2009), Korea (Park et al., 2008, Behera et al., 2012), Australia (Roberts, 2004), Brazil (Veiga and Magrini, 2009), and Egypt (Sakr et al., 2011). There is a large body of literature on EIP. In a recent review, Boons et al. (2011) discussed EIP studies from eight aspects, including conceptual framework, typologies, methodologies, models, quantitative evaluation, etc. Sakr et al. (2011) reviewed the global EIP development and identified key success and limiting factors for EIPs, such as creation of symbiotic relationship, information sharing and awareness, financial benefits, organizational structure, and legal and regulatory framework.

The Chinese government initiated a national demonstration EIP program in 2001 to address increasing environment concerns due to industrial growth (Shi et al., 2010, Shi et al., 2012a, Zhang et al., 2010, Shi et al., 2012b) such as chemical oxygen demand (COD) and sulfur dioxide (SO2) emissions reduction, and reduction of solid waste and hazardous waste generation. As of May 2013, 20 development zones had been accredited as the national demonstration EIPs in China, while another 61 ones listed as trial EIPs (Fig. 1). The Chinese government had planned to build 50 national demonstration EIPs in the 12th Five-Year Plan period (2011–2015) (MEP et al., 2011).

China has more than 1500 industrial parks. There exist a large number of cases for exploring EIP development during the past ten years (Shi et al., 2012a, Shi et al., 2012b), as well as a growing body of literature (see Appendix 1 in supplementary material). The literature can be categorized into three types. The first category describes the general components of Chinese EIP development, such as history and administration (Geng et al., 2008, Zhang et al., 2010, Zhu et al., 2010, Shi et al., 2012a, Shi et al., 2012b). The second category includes case studies such as the Tianjin economic-technological development area, Dalian Economic and Technological Development Zone, Suzhou industrial park, and Guitang Group (Zhu et al., 2007, Geng et al., 2008, Zhang et al., 2009, Shi et al., 2010a). The third category is on optimization of resource and waste management, such as material management (Geng, 2005, Yuan et al., 2010, Tian et al., 2012a, Tian et al., 2012b), energy-saving (Tian et al., 2012c), solid waste management (Dai, 2010), and eco-efficiency analysis (Wang et al., 2006, Geng et al., 2010). The history, distinctiveness, and reflections of China's ten-year development of demonstration EIP program were recently reviewed (Shi et al., 2012a, Shi et al., 2012b). However, assessment of the Chinese national demonstration EIPs' performance is still insufficient in literature (Shi et al., 2012a). Both authorities of Chinese demonstration EIP administration and academic researchers paid close attention to the quantitative analyses of EIPs' performance. How to assess the performance of EIP development in China? What are key measures that supporting the performance improvement in EIP? Thus, understanding the pros and cons of EIP practices would be crucial for furthering the success of China's national demonstration EIP program. The advantage will attract more industrial parks engaging in the program, and awareness of the disadvantage will help the authorities improve the EIP administration (Shi et al., 2012a, Shi et al., 2012b).

In view of the importance of performance assessment of the EIP program, this study aims to assess the performance of the Chinese national demonstration EIPs within a certain period (from EIP planning year to the accredited year), and tries to identify key measures supporting the performance improvement of the EIPs. The rest of this paper is organized as follows. Section two illustrates the methodology and data for assessment of the EIP performance. Section three discusses the performance thereof from the aspects of economic development, resource consumption, and waste emission with selected metrics. The measures supporting the performance improvement are further discussed. Section four presents the conclusions and discussions.

Section snippets

Methodology and data

In the following section, the methodology and data collection methods will be described.

Results and discussion

In this section, the performance of the 17 accredited EIPs are discussed from the aspects of economic development, resource consumption, and waste emission during the period of EIP planning and accreditation with the metrics in Table 1.

Conclusion

China's rapid economic growth has been bearing the cost of resource wastage and environmental deterioration. China bought the idea of eco-industrial development from the developed countries, such as Denmark, US, and Japan, and tried to tackle the issues of resource and environment by synergizing latecomer and administrative advantages in adopting the novel idea of eco-industrial park.

The economic and environmental performance of the accredited EIPs had a significant improvement. Nearly all of

Acknowledgment

The authors acknowledge the Department of Science, Technology and Standard of the Ministry of Environmental Protection in China for financial support through the projects of 201009059 and 201209039. The authors acknowledge Ministry of Science and Technology for finical support through the National 11th Five-Year Scientific Supporting Project of China (2006BAC02A16). Thanks are also given to MEP and the 17 national demonstration eco-industrial parks for providing data for this study. The authors

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