Emergy Analysis of an Industrial Park: The Case of Dalian, China 

Yong Geng, Pan Zhang, Sergio Ulgiati, S. and Joseph Sarkis

Science of the Total Environment, Vol. 408, No. 22, pp. 5273-5283, 2010.

With the rapid development of eco-industrial park projects in China, evaluating their overall eco-efficiency is becoming an important need and a big challenge academically. Developing ecologically conscious industrial park management requires analysis of both industrial and ecological systems. Traditional evaluation methods (neoclassical economics) and embodied energy and exergy analyses) hardly meet this requirement due to their minor focus on environmental issues, considered secondary to the maximization of economic and technical objectives. Such methods focus primarily on the environmental impact of emissions (and their economic consequences) and ignore the contribution of ecological products and services as well as the load placed on environmental systems and related problems of carrying capacity of economic and industrial development. This paper presents a new method, based upon emergy analysis and synthesis (Odum, 1996; Brown and Ulgiati, 2004; Odum, Brown and Williams, 2000). Such a method links economic and ecological systems together and highlights the internal relation among the different subsystems and components, thus, providing insight into the environmental performance and sustainability of an industrial park. This paper depicts the methodology of emergy analysis at the industrial park level and provides a series of emergy-based indices. A case study is investigated and discussed in order to show the potentiality of the emergy method. Results from DEDZ (Dalian Economic Development Zone) show us the potential of emergy synthesis method at the industrial park level and provides an eco-centric view of ecological and human activities, which can be used for evaluating and improving industrial activities, within environmentally concerned policy making. It has advantages over other methods as it can reveal the value that free environmental services and resources as well as labor, services and information input offer to the industrial park, especially when decisions need to be made concerning sustainability.

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