Institutional Lens upon Industrial Symbiosis Dynamics: The case of Persian Gulf Mining and Metal Industries Special Economic Zone

Abstract

Industrial Symbiosis (IS) is a collaboration between nearby industrial plants to exchange waste material and energy and achieve economic and environmental benefits that cannot be obtained individually. IS emergence in a cluster requires both technical potentials for material and energy exchange and social readiness for collaboration. In this paper, to gain insight into IS dynamics in emerging industrial clusters; we investigate shared concepts governing actors’ behavior in the form of rules and regulations, and social norms and practices. We implemented the IS dynamics framework to reveal which dynamics are supported either by the legislation or actors’ preferences. The Persian Gulf Mining and Metal Industries Special Economic Zone in Iran is used as a case study. The case study revealed that previous successful collaborations in the cluster were often self-organized, but stakeholders preferred to initiate new IS collaborations if financial incentives and infrastructure are provided. Meanwhile, the institutional analysis showed that institutional arrangements (e.g., pricing and penalties) are not in favor of IS emergence. Even though stakeholders might engage in self-organized IS because of inherent problems such as resource scarcity, the lack of clear and effective institutions could hinder IS. This understanding can help both the government and stakeholders in their strategies for future collaborations under different economic and environmental policies.

The Importance of Individual Actor Characteristics and Contextual Aspects for Promoting Industrial Symbiosis Networks

“…Noori et al [19] support the notion that actors' roles in the collaboration clearly affect what drives them to participate. They show that driving factors differ between the individual companies and the facilitators (in [19] referred to as the cluster management).…”

“…Noori et al [19] support the notion that actors' roles in the collaboration clearly affect what drives them to participate. They show that driving factors differ between the individual companies and the facilitators (in [19] referred to as the cluster management). For the individual companies, economic benefits are among the most important factors, while eco-efficiency is an important driver for the cluster management.…”

“…One interesting aspect that can be seen in Tables 1-3 is that some factors are presented as both drivers, barriers, and enablers. For instance, governmental support has been reported as a driver [18][19][20][21], barrier [22], and enabler [23,24]. In their case study, Taddeo et al [20] find that full support from the local government would most likely act as a key driver in the formation of symbiosis collaboration.…”

Exploring the emergence of waste recovery and exchange in industrial clusters

“…Household and industrial electricity prices were obtained from Iran's power generation and distribution company databases (Noori, 2020b). A previous institutional study showed no explicit penalties or limitations for waste disposal applied in PGSEZ (Noori et al, 2020). Therefore waste disposal cost was set equal to zero in the model.…”

“…The Linny-R models of the four configurations and assumptions on other economic parameters used in the models are summarized in the Supporting Information. are significantly lower than EU average prices and have not increased dramatically during the last years (Noori et al, 2020). Energy prices were changed under three scenarios to study the impact of institutional conditions on IS emergence.…”