Emergy evaluation of an industrial park in Sichuan Province, China: A modified emergy approach and its application

Abstract China's industrial parks have made great contributions to its economic growth with their rapid development. However, the resources and environment related issues have been challenging their sustainability to different degree. There still exist the following challenges in evaluating the sustainability of industrial systems due to the existing researches ignoring one or more related issues, including (1) ignorance of ecosystem's contributions to industrial activities, (2) neglect of quality differences between different resources, energies and labors, (3) involving subjectivity of human, (4) inadequate consideration of emissions' impact, and (5) lacking consideration on recycling and reuse benefit derived from industrial symbiosis. Therefore, they are isolated to some degree and lack completeness and systematization. This study aimed to deal with the five issues by adopting classic EA (emergy analysis) method (Overcoming issues 1–3.), quantifying emissions' impact in terms of emergy with some modified parameters (Addressing issue 4.) and proposing indicators to evaluating recycling and reuse benefit (Focusing on issue 5.). Then one proposed emergy method and the related indicator system for assessing the sustainability of industrial parks were set up. Next, an industrial park in Sichuan, China, as a case, was research using the proposed method and indicator system. The study results show that, according to the classic emergy based indicators, this industrial park has relatively high economic competition ability (EYR = 1.14), relatively low environmental press (ELR = 29.31), and relatively strong sustainability (ESI = 0.0388) compared to other industrial parks in China. However, its low economic efficiency and low wastes recycling/reuse degree still seriously challenge its sustainability with the local mineral resources exhaustion in the future. In terms of modified emergy indicators, emissions' impact further raises its environmental load by 3.42% and reduces its sustainability level by 2.70%. Finally, some corresponding suggestions are put forward.