Industrial ecology (IE) is the study of material and
energy flows through industrial systems. The global industrial economy can be
modeled as a network of industrial processes that extract resources from the Earth and transform
those resources into commodities which can be bought and sold to meet the needs
of humanity. Industrial ecology seeks to quantify the material flows and
document the industrial processes that make modern society function. Industrial
ecologists are often concerned with the impacts that industrial activities have
on the environment, with use of the planet's supply of
natural resources, and with problems of waste
disposal. Industrial ecology is a young but growing multidisciplinary field
of research which combines aspects of engineering, economics, sociology,
toxicology and the natural sciences.
Industrial ecology has been defined as a
"systems-based, multidisciplinary discourse that seeks to understand
emergent behaviour of complex integrated human/natural systems". The field
approaches issues of sustainability by examining problems from multiple
perspectives, usually involving aspects of sociology, the environment, economy and technology.
The name comes from the idea that the analogy of natural systems should be used
as an aid in understanding how to design sustainable industrial systems.
Overview
Example of Industrial Symbiosis. Waste steam from a waste incinerator (right) is piped to an ethanol
plant (left) where it is used as in input to their production process.
Industrial ecology is concerned with the shifting of
industrial process from linear (open loop) systems, in which resource and
capital investments move through the system to become waste, to a closed loop
system where wastes can become inputs for new processes.
Much of the research focuses on the following areas:
- material and energy flow studies ("industrial metabolism")
- dematerialization and decarbonization
- technological change and the environment
- life-cycle planning, design and assessment
- design for the environment ("eco-design")
- extended producer responsibility ("product stewardship")
- eco-industrial parks ("industrial symbiosis")
- product-oriented environmental policy
- eco-efficiency
Industrial ecology seeks to understand the way in which
industrial systems (for example a factory, an ecoregion, or
national or global economy) interact with the biosphere.
Natural ecosystems provide a metaphor for understanding how different parts of
industrial systems interact with one another, in an "ecosystem" based
on resources and infrastructural capital rather than on natural
capital. It seeks to exploit the idea that natural systems do not have
waste in them to inspire sustainable design.
Along with more general energy conservation and material conservation
goals, and redefining commodity markets and product stewardship relations strictly as a service
economy, industrial ecology is one of the four objectives of Natural Capitalism. This strategy discourages
forms of amoral purchasing arising from ignorance of what goes on at a distance
and implies a political economy that values natural
capital highly and relies on more instructional capital to design and maintain
each unique industrial ecology.
History
Industrial ecology was popularized in 1989 in a Scientific American article by Robert
Frosch and Nicholas E. Gallopoulos. Frosch and Gallopoulos' vision was
"why would not our industrial system behave like an ecosystem,
where the wastes of a species may be resource
to another species? Why would not the outputs of an industry be the inputs of
another, thus reducing use of raw materials, pollution, and saving on waste
treatment?" A notable example resides in a Danish industrial park in the
city of Kalundborg. Here several linkages of
byproducts and waste heat can be found between numerous entities such as a
large power plant, an oil refinery, a pharmaceutical plant, a plasterboard
factory, an enzyme manufacturer, a waste company and the city itself.
The scientific field Industrial Ecology has grown quickly in
recent years. The Journal
of Industrial Ecology (since 1997), the International
Society for Industrial Ecology (since 2001), and the journal Progress in
Industrial Ecology (since 2004) give Industrial Ecology a strong and
dynamic position in the international scientific community. Industrial Ecology
principles are also emerging in various policy realms such as the concept of the
Circular Economy that is being promoted in China. Although the definition of
the Circular Economy has yet to be formalized, generally the focus is on
strategies such as creating a circular flow of materials, and cascading energy
flows. An example of this would be using waste heat
from one process to run another process that requires a lower temperature. The
hope is that strategy such as this will create a more efficient economy with
fewer pollutants and other unwanted by-products.
Principles
One of the central principles of Industrial Ecology is the
view that societal and technological systems are bounded within the biosphere,
and do not exist outside of it. Ecology is used as a metaphor due to the observation
that natural systems reuse materials and have a largely closed loop cycling of
nutrients. Industrial Ecology approaches problems with the hypothesis that by
using similar principles as natural systems, industrial systems can be
improved to reduce their impact on the natural environment as well. The table
shows the general metaphor.
Biosphere
|
Technosphere
|
|
|
The Kalundborg industrial park is located in Denmark. This
industrial park is special because companies reuse each other's waste (which
then becomes by-products). For example, the Energy E2 Asnæs Power Station
produces gypsum as a by-product of the electricity generation process; this
gypsum becomes a resource for the BPB Gyproc A/S which produces plasterboards.
This is one example of a system inspired by the biosphere-technosphere
metaphor: in ecosystems, the waste from one organism is used as inputs to other
organisms; in industrial systems, waste from a company is used as a resource by
others.
Apart from the direct benefit of incorporating waste into
the loop, the use of an eco-industrial park can be a means of making renewable
energy generating plants, like Solar PV, more economical and environmentally
friendly. In essence, this assists the growth of the renewable energy industry
and the environmental benefits that come with replacing fossil-fuels.
IE examines societal issues and their relationship with both
technical systems and the environment. Through this holistic
view , IE recognizes that solving problems must involve understanding the
connections that exist between these systems, various aspects cannot be viewed
in isolation. Often changes in one part of the overall system can
propagate and cause changes in another part. Thus, you can only understand a
problem if you look at its parts in relation to the whole. Based on this
framework, IE looks at environmental issues with a systems
thinking approach.
Take a city for instance. A city can be divided into
commercial areas, residential areas, offices, services, infrastructures, etc.
These are all sub-systems of the 'big city’ system. Problems can emerge in one
sub-system, but the solution has to be global. Let’s say the price of housing
is rising dramatically because there is too high a demand for housing. One
solution would be to build new houses, but this will lead to more people living
in the city, leading to the need of more infrastructure like roads, schools,
more supermarkets, etc. This system is a simplified interpretation of reality
whose behaviors can be ‘predicted’.
In many cases, the systems IE deals with are complex
systems. Complexity makes it difficult to understand the behavior of the system
and may lead to rebound effects. Due to unforeseen behavioral change of users
or consumers, a measure taken to improve environmental performance does not
lead to any improvement or may even worsen the situation. For instance, in big
cities, traffic can become problematic. Let's imagine the government wants to
reduce air pollution and makes a policy stating that only cars with an even
license plate number can drive on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Odd license plate
numbers can drive on Wednesdays and Fridays. Finally, the other days, both cars
are allowed on the roads. The first effect could be that people buy a second
car, with a specific demand for license plate numbers, so they can drive every
day. The rebound effect is that, the days when all cars are allowed to drive,
some inhabitants now use both cars (whereas they only had one car to use before
the policy). The policy did obviously not lead to environmental improvement but
even made air pollution worse.
Moreover, life cycle thinking is also a very
important principle in industrial ecology. It implies that all environmental
impacts caused by a product, system, or project during its life cycle are taken
into account. In this context life cycle includes
- Raw material extraction
- Material processing
- Manufacture
- Use
- Maintenance
- Disposal
The transport necessary between these stages is also taken
into account as well as, if relevant, extra stages such as reuse,
remanufacture, and recycle. Adopting a life cycle approach is essential to avoid
shifting environmental impacts from one life cycle stage to another. This is
commonly referred to as problem shifting. For instance, during the re-design of
a product, one can choose to reduce its weight, thereby decreasing use of
resources. However, it is possible that the lighter materials used in the new
product will be more difficult to dispose of. The environmental impacts of the
product gained during the extraction phase are shifted to the disposal phase.
Overall environmental improvements are thus null.
A final and important principle of IE is its integrated
approach or multidisciplinarity. IE takes into account three
different disciplines: social sciences (including economics), technical
sciences and environmental sciences. The challenge is to merge them into a single
approach.
Tools
People
|
Planet
|
Profit
|
Modeling
|
|
|
|
|
Criticisms
The discipline of industrial ecology is to a large part
based on the implicit assumption that if “we just get our technologies right”,
the problems of environmental pollution and unsustainability will be solved.
This is the reason why most current research in industrial ecology is focused
on technological innovation (i.e., the T in the IPAT
equation), such as improvements in eco-efficiency, design for environment,
material flow analysis, etc. This simplistic view has been recently questioned
by Huesemann and Huesemann[7]
who demonstrate that negative unintended consequences of technology are
inherently unpredictable and unavoidable, that most current techno-optimism
reflected in industrial ecology is unjustified, and that modern technology, in
the presence of continued economic growth, does not promote sustainability, but
hastens collapse. Therefore, more than technological tinkering is needed to
achieve long-term sustainability. Most importantly, the problem of human overpopulation must be addressed
immediately and a transition to a steady state economy is needed to guarantee
environmental and societal sustainability.
Future directions
The ecosystem metaphor popularized by Frosch
and Gallopoulos has been a valuable creative tool for helping researchers look
for novel solutions to difficult problems. Recently, it has been pointed out
that this metaphor is based largely on a model of classical ecology, and that
advancements in understanding ecology based on complexity science have been made by researchers
such as C. S. Holling, James J.
Kay, and others. For industrial ecology, this may mean a shift from a more
mechanistic view of systems, to one where sustainability
is viewed as an emergent property of a complex system. To explore this
further, several researchers are working with agent based modeling techniques .
Exergy
analysis is performed in the field of industrial ecology to use energy more
efficiently. The term exergy was coined by Zoran Rant
in 1956, but the concept was developed by J. Willard Gibbs. In recent decades,
utilization of exergy has spread outside of physics and engineering to the
fields of industrial ecology, ecological economics, systems
ecology, and energetics.
Recently, there has been work advocating for large scale
photovoltaic production facilities in an industrial ecology setting. These
facilities not only reduce their environmental impact but also decrease the
costs of photovoltaic productions to as little as $1 per Watt by economy of
scale.
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