1. Identify a regional network of production (drawing on own experience, literature, the news)

The Eco-Industrial Park at Kalundborg, Denmark has been developed gradually over the last 30 years. It began in 1961 when Statoil (then Esso) needed water for their refinery near Kalundborg. So, pipes were constructed from Statoil to the nearest lake Tissø. Through the years, different private and public companies and institutions like the Kalundborg municipality were introduced and became part of the park. Now it is composed of 9 private and public entities: (Chertow, 2004 & Wikipedia):

– DONG Energy (E2 Asnæs Power Station): the largest plant producing electricity in Denmark (a 1037-MW facility fired by orimulsion and coal)

– Statoil Refinery of Kalundborg: Denmark’s oldest and largest refinery, with a production capacity of approximately 5.5 million tons of crude oil annually

– Gyproc A/S: part of BPB Gyproc, producing plasterboards and plasterboard-based systems for the construction industry

– Novo Nordisk A/S: an international, biotechnology, and pharmaceutical company offering a wide range of insulin products to world markets

– Novozymes A/S: the largest producer of enzymes in the world, with its largest single factory in Kalundborg

– A/S Bioteknisk Jordrens Soilrem: specialist in remediation of soil contaminated by oil, chemicals, and heavy metals that clean approximately 500,000 tons of contaminated soil annually

– Kalundborg Forsyning A/S: water and heat supplier as well as waste disposal for Kalundborg citizens

– The municipality of Kalundborg

– Kara/Novoren: the inter-municipal waste treatment company

Kalundborg Eco-Park has received enormous attention from practitioners as well as scientists and it is considered one of the most internationally well-known examples of a local network for exchanging waste products among industrial producers, in other words, for practicing the main goals of Industrial Symbiosis (van den Bergh et al., 2004).

2. Analyze this network using at least two of the concepts presented, paying particular attention to the linkages of the regional network with ‘non-local’ actors

The Kalundborg Eco-Park is a type of Resource Network because it complies with the following characteristics:

Material & Energy exchange:

It is registered that in this park about 20 exchanges occur among the participants involving water, energy, and a wide variety of residual materials and by-products that become feedstocks in other processes (Chertow, 2004). All of these exchanges are done with the objective to utilize on material and energy savings. Some of the most important synergies practiced in this eco-park are the ones exchanging non-renewable sources like water and energy (comes from coal & fossils). Because these are non-renewable sources, many of the companies involved have been putting a lot of emphasis in bringing more efficiency to the system. For example; in the Kalundborg region there is a large groundwater deficit, and groundwater supplies have gradually dropped over a period of 20 years as the local water consuming industries have expanded in size and consumption As a result of these developments, a number of public/private initiatives for saving groundwater have been initiated over the last few decades. Being an important one, the IS arrangement between Statoil & Asnaes who have been made it possible to replace and diversify the intake of water to the power plant and to optimise the energy efficiency of the facility. Consequently, the intake of surface water at the power plant has had a direct effect on the intake of fresh groundwater, amounting to an annual saving of 686,000 m3 in 2002, or more than 6.9 million m3 for the period 1990–2002 (Jacobsen, 2006). For the energy part, the benefits of the steam/heat IS relationships are based on gradual substitution/cascading the energy content in the water that is used at different levels ranging from high-energy steam exchanges to low-energy exchanges of salty cooling water. Since 1981, the town of Kalundborg has eliminated the use of 3,500 oil-fired residential furnaces by distributing heat from the power plan through a network of underground pipes. Non-local actors to this network are the homeowners of the city of Kalundborg who don’t mind paying for the piping system (as a tax), because they receive cheap and reliable heat in return.

Producing Knowledge

The success of Kalundborg is due to the high connectedness among the actors in this network. This network has emerged as a “response to specific social circumstances that stimulated the building of mutual trust among industries and created an environment for cooperative action” (van den Bergh et al., 2004).

Constructing Rules

In Kalundborg, the industrial network is a tightly coupled one where all the industrial executives know each other and have good contacts with the regulatory authorities (van den Bergh et al., 2004), creating in this way a stable playing field where they can easily influence institutional conditions.

Creating Values

The central actors of the different companies involved in the Kalundborg symbiosis have gradually formulated a set of common values and beliefs which have evolved as a result of the symbiotic relations, and which have guided the further development of the different by-product exchange projects. In addition,this industrial eco-park has been considered one of the world’s best examples of industrial symbiotic network. Its framework has shaped the collective mindset because it has been used as a standard model for other projects. For example; the Avedore project (Denmark), which demonstrated possible and profitable exchanges and non-significant differences (technological and economic preconditions), was not realised spontaneously as in Kalundborg. It seems that it revealed a very low degree of communication and limited sense of community in the industrial district.

The Kalundborg Symbiosis network exhibits Resource Dependency theory because its organisations depend on each other’s resources. These resources ultimately originate from an organisation’s environment mainly as by-products or waste streams, in other words the resources that one organisation needs are thus frequently in the hands of other organisations. Hereby, the resources are a basis of power, for example; Statoil ‘s power over Asnaes is equal to Asnaes dependence on Statoil’s resources. The closing-material loop setting of an industrial symbiosis model as seen in the figure below, identifies this resource dependency:

Nevertheless, the interconnections of the Kalundborg network have not encouraged the need to overcome dependency and improve organisational autonomy and legitimacy via actions like alliances, joint ventures, mergers and acquisitions. On the contrary, all the companies involved praise their autonomy and share the same level of power by showing mutually cooperative behaviour.

3. Make clear how the network you identify constrains and/or enables actors to work towards closing material loops.

The Kalundborg Eco-Park has evolved from an impressive design. This industrial symbiosis never received public subsidies and each linkage between firms was negotiated as an independent business deal. What is remarkable about this model is that “Kalundborg symbiosis has always been driven by market forces, and the actual physical linkages and their economic viability were the subject of bilateral talks between industrial actors without external prompting” (Sterr, 2004). In other words, “the story of Kalundborg is mainly a story of self-governance”. It is not just a matter of technological viability, but also the level of connectedness and trust of the firms in an industrial park. For instance, it has been rumored that the success of this network has been attributed to the frequent gathering of managers in a local pub. It can be seen that communication has become a crucial factor for deriving cooperative behavior, which is one of the enablers for the success of a network system. In the case of Kalundborg, it is not only about buying and selling of waste and/or by-products, but adjusting production processes in such a way that next-door firms can be connected (van den Bergh et al., 2004).

References

Chertow, M., (2004). Industrial Symbiosis. Encyclopedia of Energy Volume 3. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/B012176480X00557X

Jacobsen, N.B. (2006). The industrial symbiosis in Kalundborg: a quantitative assessment of economic and environmental aspects, JIE, 239-255. http://www.exima.dk/cases/Journal_of_Industrial_Ecology_1012239.pdf

Sterr T., (2004). The industrial region as a promising unit for eco-industrial development—reflections, practical experience and establishment of innovative instruments to support industrial ecology. Journal of Cleaner Production 12 pg. 947–965. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0959652604000836#sec4

Van den Bergh, J. C. J. M., Janssen M. A., 2004. Economics of Industrial Ecology. Materials, structural change and spatial scales. Massachusetts Institutes of Technology. The MIT Press. ISBN 0-262-22071-7