Science of the Total Environment 408 (2010) 52735283

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Science of the Total Environment

j o u r n a l h o m e p a g e : w w w. e l s ev i e r. c o m / l o c a t e / s c i t o t e n v

Emergy analysis of an industrial park: The case of Dalian, China

Yong Geng a,, Pan Zhang b,1, Sergio Ulgiati c,2, Joseph Sarkis d,3
a

Institute of Applied Ecology, Chinese Academy of Science, Shenyang, Liaoning Province (110016), PR China
School of Management, Dalian University of Technology, Dalian 116024, PR China
c
Department of Sciences for the Environment, Parthenope University of Napoli, 80133 Napoli, Italy
d
Graduate School of Management, Clark University, USA
b

a r t i c l e

i n f o

Article history:
Received 23 April 2010
Received in revised form 16 July 2010
Accepted 30 July 2010
Keywords:
Industrial park
Emergy analysis and synthesis
Eco-efciency
Sustainable development

a b s t r a c t
With the rapid development of eco-industrial park projects in China, evaluating their overall eco-efciency 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 based on neoclassical economics and embodied energy and exergy analyses have certain limitations
due to their focus with 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. These approaches 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. Such
a method links economic and ecological systems together, highlighting the internal relations among the
different subsystems and components. The emergy-based method provides 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 emergy method's practical potential. Results from DEDZ (Dalian Economic
Development Zone) case show us the potential of emergy synthesis method at the industrial park level for
environmental policy making. Its advantages and limitations are also discussed with avenues for future
research identied.
2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
Industrial parks and industrial clusters are effective strategies for
governments at all levels to help encourage economic and industrial
growth. With this industrial growth environmental concerns also
arise. To help mitigate these environmental concerns the ecoindustrial park (EIP) strategy has been adopted by many countries
in order to support business activities and local community life by
optimizing the use of energy, materials, and community resources
(Geng and Ct, 2004). Such an innovative approach can help achieve
greater efciency through economies of systems integration, where
partnership interaction between different rms and productive
activities meet common service, transportation, and infrastructure
needs.

Corresponding author. Tel.: + 86 24 83960372; fax: + 86 24 83970371.

E-mail addresses: gengyong@iae.ac.cn (Y. Geng), panda091023@yahoo.com.cn
(P. Zhang), sergio.ulgiati@uniparthenope.it (S. Ulgiati), jsarkis@clarku.edu (J. Sarkis).
1
Tel.: + 86 411 84707351; fax: + 86 411 84708342.
2
Tel.: + 39 81 547 6666.
3
Tel.: + 1 508 793 7659; fax: + 1 508 793 8822.
0048-9697/$ see front matter 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.scitotenv.2010.07.081

The greater eco-efciency of EIPs and industrial parks in general

has not been thoroughly investigated. Eco-efciency focuses on
lowering the environmental impact of a product over its life cycle.
Emergy analysis and synthesis is a valuable approach for organizations and industrial parks to manage their eco-efciency and
migration towards EIPs. Emergy is dened as the total direct and
indirect energy of one source type (e.g., solar) required to produce a
product or provide a service. Thus, emergy accounts for the total
energy and material ows required to support a systems network, of
which EIPs are focused industrial ecological examples (Tilley, 2003).
This unique approach has not been applied at the industrial park
level of analysis. In our evaluation of the literature, we were unable to
nd thorough emergy-based papers focusing on either theoretical or
practical aspects of industrial parks (Ulgiati et al., 2007; Wang et al,
2006). We aim to ll this gap in the industrial ecology eld.
The emergy analysis of industrial parks is an important tool that
can be integrated within the framework of other traditional methods
for energy, environmental and economic evaluation (such as life cycle
analysis and material ow analysis). To achieve this goal of
developing emergy analysis for industrial parks, we rst introduce
the concept of emergy, as well as its relevant theoretical basis. We
then investigate how to perform an emergy synthesis at the industrial

5274

Y. Geng et al. / Science of the Total Environment 408 (2010) 52735283

park level, in which we also more clearly dene industrial parks and
EIPs. A case study, based in Dalian, China, is presented in order to
further demonstrate the feasibility of this approach. A critical analysis,
including discussion of benets, advantages and limitations of this
emergy method is also presented. Further research directions are
detailed.
2. Emergy analysis background
Emergy analysis and synthesis was developed over the past three
decades as a tool for environmental policy and resource quality
evaluation within the assessment of complex system dynamics. The
theoretical and conceptual basis for emergy analysis and synthesis is
grounded in thermodynamics and general systems theory. Emergy is
dened as the sum of all inputs of available energy directly or
indirectly required by a process to provide a given product or ow
when the inputs are expressed in the same form (or type) of energy,
usually solar energy (Odum, 1996). The ratio of emergy required to
make a product to the energy of the product is called transformity.
Transformities of the main natural ows in the biosphere (wind, rain,
ocean currents, geological cycles, etc) are calculated as the ratio of
total emergy driving the biosphere as a whole to the actual energy of
the ow under consideration. Transformities have been calculated for
a wide variety of energies, materials, and services, thus, building up a
solid foundation for emergy analysis (Odum, 2000a, b).
Emergy analysis and synthesis considers all systems to be
networks of energy ows and determines the emergy value of the
streams and systems involved. It attempts to assign the correct value
to ecological and economic products and services based upon a theory
of energy ow in system ecology and its relation to system survival
(Ulgiati and Brown, 1998). It is a useful tool to evaluate the overall
eco-efciency of a human-dominated system (i.e. industrial parks) by
providing new information and lending insight regarding the
advisability and net benets (i.e. sustainability) from proposed
projects (Hau and Bakshi, 2004).
Traditional evaluation methods for measuring overall eco-efciency (such as life cycle analysis and material ow analysis)
generally assess economic and environmental performance of a
human-dominated ecosystem separately. This practice hides the
internal relations between economic and environmental aspects and
disregards most of their effects on a global system's behavior. Emergy
analysis, a method rooted in irreversible thermodynamics and general
systems theory (von Bertalanffy, 1968), is capable of qualitatively and
quantitatively assessing the support which a system requires and
actually receives from the surrounding environment. The relations
among a system's components by means of exchange of matter,
energy and information are also considered. Emergy analysis is
initiated by recognizing that there is a quality difference between
units (joules or grams) of different energy and material ows. One
joule of electricity is different from 1 J of crude oil, because of the
different convergence of inputs over the whole chain of processes
which led to the nal product.
Emergy focuses on the work performed by nature to provide a
resource. The assumption is that the greater the amount of work
required for producing the resource, the less renewable and
replaceable the resource. Nature's work is assessed by considering
all inputs in terms of the direct and indirect solar energy needed to
generate material and energy ows through a chain of processes.
Flows are quantied and compared according to the amount of solar
equivalent joules (seJ) required for their provision and management
(see Bastianoni et al., 2005 for a natural gas ow example).
The total emergy resulting from all input ows provides the size of
a system. The amount of emergy (i.e. the amount of environmental
support) needed to make one unit of a given product or ow is named
emergy intensity and measured as seJ/unit. When the unit based on an
energy input (e.g. joule), the emergy intensity is measured as seJ/J and

dened as transformity. When the unit is a mass, such as grams, emergy

intensity is dened as specic emergy and uses the unit seJ/g. Emergy
intensities are measures of efciency and involve the conversion of the
necessary environmental input into the nal output, whether the output
is 1 J of energy, 1 g of chemical species, or 1 h of labor.
Other emergy-based performance indicators, such as EYREmergy
Yield Ratio, ELREnvironmental Loading Ratio, and ESIEmergy
Sustainability Index do exist and can be calculated (Brown and
Ulgiati, 2004a, b). The whole set of emergy intensities and emergy
performance indicators shed signicant light on a system's dynamics,
performance and sustainability. Emergy's inputs expressed on a
common basis (e.g. solar emergy) facilitate more effective comparative analysis. It is a valuable and complementary tool to the
traditional environmentally and economically based tools utilized to
evaluate industrial systems.
3. Emergy analysis and industrial parks
3.1. Industrial parks
According to UNIDO (1997), an industrial park can be dened as a
tract of land developed and subdivided into plots according to a
comprehensive plan with provision for roads, transport and public
utilities for the use of a group of rms and industrial business oriented
activities. In an industrial park the problems of zoning can be
minimized by properly grouping various types of industrial activities,
and costs of infrastructure and utilities can be reduced by concentrating activities in planned areas (Geng and Zhao, 2009). In addition,
complementary industries and services provided by industrial parks
can entail diversied effects on the surrounding region and nally
stimulate regional development.
Through industrial parks, organizations benet from economies of
scale in terms of land development, construction, and shared facilities
(Ct and Hall, 1995). Due to such advantages, industrial parks have
played an important role in the national development strategies of
many countries and have become irreplaceable where economic
development is concerned (Chiu, 2002). These parks attract direct
foreign investment and improve local technological capabilities. In
addition to economic benets, concentration of industrial activities
also generates negative effects to the local environment, as well as
human health and safety of adjacent communities. At the local level,
the activity of these industrial zones very often translates into
environmental problems such as magnied pollution, additional
treatment costs due to water pollution, increased safety problems
and health care costs, loss of biodiversity and increased challenges to
coastal zone management (Geng and Zhao, 2009). The impact of
industrial parks is even larger when coupled with current scarcity of
natural resources.
For these environmental burden reasons throughout the world,
eco-industrial development projects are receiving serious consideration and construction. Industrial park managers have sought out
strategies to initiate and achieve EIP status (Geng et al., 2007). But a
major challenge for promoting and managing industrial parks, and
potential maturation to EIPs, is how to holistically evaluate the overall
eco-efciency of such initiatives. In China, the government developed
and released national EIP standards. Many of the standards are based
on overall eco-efciency and do not reect the systematic perspectives of one EIP effort (Geng et al., 2009a, b). Without a reliable
quantitative and qualitative evaluation method, it is difcult to
determine if industrial or eco-industrial park efforts have achieved
desired results.
3.2. Emergy and industrial parks considerations
Due to its special roots in general systems theory and irreversible
thermodynamics, emergy provides a comprehensive understanding

Y. Geng et al. / Science of the Total Environment 408 (2010) 52735283

of ecological and human-dominated self-organizing systems behavior. For this reason it has been widely used to analyze ecological, social
and economic systems (Odum, 1996; Brown and Ulgiati, 2004a, b). An
industrial park is a complex system with important similarities to
natural ecosystems as both take in energy and materials and
transform them into products and waste material for use by other
surrounding components (Geng and Ct, 2002). The complex
network of materials, energy and information that exist within
industrial parks, and their reliance on the resources and services
provided by the biosphere, make an analogy to natural ecosystems
very relevant. As a consequence, emergy analysis provides an
appropriate way to evaluate the overall eco-efciency of an industrial
park.
When applying emergy analysis at the industrial park level, the
existing differences between natural ecosystems and industrial
systems cannot be fully disregarded. Industrial processes are mainly
linear transformations of input ows into products, while natural
processes are cyclical and some linearity is characteristic of immature
ecological systems (Lotka 1922a, b; Holling, 1986; Odum and Odum,
2001; Allen et al., 2002). Such immature systems exist in a
development stage, typically concentrating on growth and throughput with limited developments of material cycling efciency. Instead,
mature ecosystems are organized as a relatively stable, long-lasting,
complex and interrelated community of plants, animals, fungi and
bacteria that have mastered the principles of optimum not
necessarily maximum efciency. Most of the species in the mature
ecosystem possess lower growth potentials but greater capabilities for
utilization of and competition for scarce resources. These organisms
interact through a network of highly complex and efcient symbiotic
relationships and food webs. In these systems, the organisms are more
diversied and the use of resources is more efcient. These types of
interactions are highly facilitated by cooperation among organisms,
which is conducted in such a way as to fully use their habitat and to
gather and use energy efciently. Therefore, if an industrial system
wants to improve its sustainability, industrial symbiosis activities (i.e.,
byproduct exchange and collaborative networking) among companies should be encouraged so as to increase the recycling rate of
wastes, global efciency and maximum empower (emergy
throughput).
Although in the short run maximizing prots may appear as a
better economic strategy for each individual enterprise, in the long
run this could destabilize the larger economic and environmental
system (supply chain) and may also negatively affect the economy of
the individual enterprise itself (Beale and Fernando, 2009; Hahn et al.,
2010). Short-term prot maximization by individual companies may
cause long-term depletion for all resources and companies. There is no
future for economic activities if the functions of the environment as a
source and as a sink are disregarded and over-exploited. Maximizing
empower does not mean disregarding the environment, but instead
requires emergy ows to be maximized through all hierarchical levels
of the larger system (region, society and individuals) for optimum and
stable performance (Odum and Odum, 2001, pp.7071).
Describing and evaluating the performance of such integrated
systems can be greatly enhanced with an emergy methodological
application. Thus, an introduction of new emergy-based performance
indices for waste disposal, reuse and recycling, as and their
assessment and application at the industrial symbiotic level is
benecial.
4. A methodology for industrial parks emergy analysis
Emergy analysis is based on energy and energy quality as the
main driving forces supporting systems and ecosystems. We now
introduce how emergy applies to industrial park dynamics in both
energy availability and energy quality aspects. In this methodology,
for the case study industrial park, the emergy of renewable energies,

5275

non-renewable resources, goods, services and information are

calculated as the total amount of energy ows required to make
them, each one multiplied by suitable transformities (seJ/J) or
specic emergies (seJ/g).
Since all the ecological materials and services are transformed and
stored forms of solar energy (Odum, 1988), the amount of solar
energy used directly or indirectly within an industrial park is used as a
measure of the global ecological input or investment within this
system. Consequently, solar equivalent energy or solar emergy is used
as a common unit for the industrial park emergy analysis (see Odum,
1996; Brown and Ulgiati, 2004a, b for further emergy discussion).
The major steps in this methodology include: (1) data and
information acquisition and collection; (2) data categorization; (3)
emergy ows and indicators determination; (4) aggregation to
industrial park level of analysis.

4.1. Data acquisition

The rst step is to collect relevant data and information about the
system, a common environmental analysis step seen in other
approaches such as Life Cycle Assessment Inventory or Exergy
analysis. Data availability and their reliability and quality are very
important, and therefore, several data acquisition approaches should
be performed in parallel, including direct surveys, document reviews,
key-informant interviews, and informal meetings. The identication,
collection and review of primary and secondary documentation can
provide valuable information.
Key-informant interviews are a valuable source of information and
can provide signicant information on specic hard to nd subject
data. Informants can often provide information not attainable through
document search (Lo and Leung, 2000). However, the value of keyinformant interviews is dependent on the selection of the informants.
Responses are expected to differ due to particular sectoral perspectives. In order to further validate collected data and information,
informal meetings with local stakeholders should be held, in order to
gather comments.
An energy system diagram of the whole system at this stage is
mandatory (Fig. 1). This diagram aids identication of input and
output ows, system components, interactions among components
and nally products. In the diagram, ows are organized clockwise
from left to right according to their increasing transformity. This
strategy helps in simplifying diagrams, preventing ows to cross each
other and provides a better picture of existing hierarchy of
components.

4.2. Data categorization

The second step is data categorization into different groups, such
as economic inputs, renewable resources, non-renewable resources
and economic yields. Such groups should be reviewed and revised if
necessary. Once groups are developed for each data set, all data
should be coded and summarized into tabular form. An analytical
table should be constructed to gather and organize the information
acquired from the different sources (with clear reference to the
source of data). Invalid or inaccurate data may need to be deleted
with rational analysis and further interviews necessary in order to
arrive at accurate data. Other data may be added or deleted based on
thermodynamic and chemical evaluation of the process or even
from direct measures. The table, once completed, describes the
actual ows of materials, labors and energy and is the starting point
for overall evaluation of input ows. In order to convert various
inputs to common (solar) emergy units, the different units for each
ow should be multiplied by suitable transformities or specic
emergies.

5276

Y. Geng et al. / Science of the Total Environment 408 (2010) 52735283

Water

Fuel &
Electricity

Materials
& Goods

Machinery
&
Buildings

Sea
Currents

Service

Deep heat

Labor
Heat

Marine
Ecosystem Local sea

Industrial Process
Market

Wind

Waste
Sun

Treatment

To disposal

Heat

To disposal

Local air

Landfill
Or
Natural

Fig. 1. Diagram of industrial park material ows.

4.3. Emergy ows and indicators determination

The next step is to draw and evaluate emergy ows (Fig. 2) in
order to holistically analyze industrial system behavior. Within this
chart of emergy ows several emergy-based indicators can be dened.
Two of these including the Environmental Loading Ratio (ELR), and
Emergy Yield Ratio (EYR) can be developed from this diagram. Also
introduced in this section are indicators for split and co-product
byproduct waste to emergy indicators. Example transformity expressions for industrial park processes are next introduced in this section.
4.3.1. The Environmental Loading Ratio
ELR = (F + N)/R and represents the ratio of purchased (F) and nonrenewable emergy (N) to locally free environmental emergy (R). ELR
is an indicator of the pressure of industrial activities on the local
ecosystem. ELR measures ecosystem stress due to excess exploitation
of local non-renewable resources or investment from outside,
compared with locally available renewable resources. The purchased
inputs (F) have two possibilities. F with L&S includes the direct
material imported (I), the labor contribution to the process (L), and
the indirect labor, called service (S), which comes along with the
imported materials and carries a non-negligible fraction of the
supporting emergy. While F without L&S only calculates the net
physical material ow I, which mainly focuses on the industrial
production and energy conversion process.
F
I
S
L

Industrial Process

Industrial Park

Fig. 2. Diagram of aggregated emergy ows.

4.3.2. Emergy Yield Ratio

EYR = U/F = (R + N + F)/F is the ratio of total emergy used and
exploited by the process (U) to the emergy (F) invested from outside
the system. EYR measures the net benet to the economy, namely the
amount of local resources exploited derived from the investment
amount. It measures the capability of industrial processes to exploit
local resources. It must be emphasized that EYR evaluates the
imported-local emergy ow balance, while ELR is sensitive to the
renewablenon-renewable ow balance. These ratios complement
the information already provided by total process emergy (U) and
transformity, or specic emergy, which measures production chain
conversion efciency.
4.3.3. Total transformity and emergy indicators
Total emergy and transformity are not sensitive to the renewable
non-renewable nor to the local-imported balance ows. The complete
complementary set of indicators and ratios are needed for a
comprehensive assessment of a system's behavior. Further discussion
on emergy-based indicators can be found in Brown and Ulgiati
(2004a, b), Raugei et al. (2005), and Ulgiati et al. (2005), where
meaning, shortcomings and also misconceptions of such indicators
are detailed.
In order to reect the unique features of industrial parks, new
emergy indices should be developed. For instance, when applying
emergy analysis at the industrial park level, the impact of better waste
management should be considered. Large quantities of different
wastes are released to the environment by an industrial system, these
wastes can become input resources for another component of the
system, similar to what happens within a natural ecosystem.
Traditional wastes, materials not used for further consumption, that
can be utilized (recycled, reclaimed or reused) in later stages are
dened as byproducts. Since we do not initially know which waste
outputs will become byproducts, we will initially dene all traditional
waste products as byproducts. Wastes are non-usable material that is
disposed (e.g. landlled) after leaving the industrial park process.
Byproducts can be outows from many industrial processes and as
such should be accounted for. In some cases, they are directly useful
resources, for instance, sawdust, a byproduct, may be burned to
generate steam. In other cases, byproducts are not immediately useful
and require some treatment, such as lignin wastes from a pulp mill.
Nevertheless, they are outputs and carry an emergy content that can
still drive downstream positive or negative processes. By carefully
considering the waste emergy factor, we can judge the efciency and
effectiveness of industrial activities and the level of integration

Y. Geng et al. / Science of the Total Environment 408 (2010) 52735283

5277

F1
F2

N1

N2
Painting
factory

Painted board

Split

Unused
paint

Heatr

R2
R
R1

Market

Power plant
Electricity
Waste

Disposal
Fly ash

Building
Material

Co-products

Byproduct

Fig. 3. The difference among co-product, byproduct and splits.

reached by the industrial park. The smaller the waste emergy, the
more efcient the industrial park.
It is difcult to integrate waste management and recycling without
clear reference to emergy algebra (Brown and Ulgiati, 2004a, b) and to
the nature of wastes generated. Byproducts may be categorized as
splits or co-products. Fig. 3 introduces the concepts of splits and
co-products for emergy synthesis of industrial parks. A split is the
separation of a given byproduct ow into two or more ows having
similar physical chemical characteristics. One example of a split is
when a water pipeline splits to two different users. Co-products are
ows or items that cannot be separated and have different physical
chemical natures. Electricity and hot water in a power plant are an
example of co-products. These co-product ows are generated by two
parallel and coupled4 processes within the system.
For splits the input emergy is allocated proportionally to the
amount of product (as can be measured by mass, volume or other
units) owing in each branch of the split. For co-products the total
emergy is assigned to each product, because all of it is necessary for
the process to happen, whether we use all or some of the co-products.
As a consequence, the transformity of each co-product is different, as
are their quality and properties. Sometimes, due to the system
uncertainty or complex coupling of intermediate processes, an output
can be considered both split and co-product, with different percentages. In this situation transformity must have an intermediate value.
In order to account for the waste emergy, their characterization will
be important. We now further dene emergy evaluations for splits
and co-products separately.

4.3.3.1. Splits indicators. A waste output with characteristics similar to

the inputs can be considered (in principle) a split. Examples of splits
include a piece of unused fabric from clothes manufacture, unused
paint, silicon scraps in the electronics industry or wood chips and
sawdust. Splits carry forward a fraction of the input emergy. Split
waste can be easily reused or recycled by investing a small additional
amount of emergy for collection and processing. For example, silicon

The parallel and coupled processes in this system are represented by a turbine
needed to generate power (process 1) and the water in the pipeline that is used to cool
down the heat source is heated and has a value for other processes (process 2). They
are in different processes but occur in parallel or concurrently.

scraps can be re-melted or sawdust can be hot-pressed to make wood

panels.
In carrying out these activities with byproducts (former wastes),
overall waste emergy (EmW) can potentially be looped back into the
upstream steps of the process or exchanged with other systems for
new products production. In both cases, the emergy of recycled waste
(EmRW) is not lost. If the waste ow is landlled, no longer available as
a byproduct, there is a net loss of emergy. This characterization allows
for the calculation of a waste-to-total emergy ratio (EWR = EmW/
EmU) and a recycled (or reused)-to-total waste ratio (WRR = EmRW/
EmW). These emergy indicators provide insight into industrial system
performance, calling for increased reuse of waste (lowered EWR and
increased WRR).
4.3.3.2. Co-products indicators. Co-product examples include hot water
from electricity production, waste heat from other industrial
processes, or straw from corn production. The emergy algebra does
not allow for allocation mechanisms for these types of wastes, and the
total emergy driving the system is assigned to each of them. If one of
the co-products is wasted, for example it is lost to landlls, we cannot
say that the whole driving emergy is wasted. The reason for this
assumption is the continued presence of other co-products that might
still present a useful input.5 Nor can we calculate a fraction of waste to
input emergy, because the result would always be equal to 1.
However, even in this case, the unused co-product can be supplied
to another nearby process which might save on primary input
resources. As a consequence, the total emergy, UT, required to run the
two (or more) coupled processes would be smaller than the sum of
emergies required to run the n processes separately (U1, U2Un),
without the co-product. An integration ratio expression to calculate
the emergy required with and without integration of processes has
been introduced and can be applied in this situation (Ulgiati et al.,
2007). This integration ratio expression is dened by Eq. (1) as:
IR = Integration Ratio = UT = Un b1:

5
For the electricity and hot water co-product example, we note that these two coproducts are generated by the same energy. Let us say that the hot water is disposed
from facility without any further productive use, for example discharging this hot
water into the local river. Yet, other facilities may still use the generated power for
productive industrial processes. In this regard, the emergy from power is not wasted.

5278

Y. Geng et al. / Science of the Total Environment 408 (2010) 52735283

A lower IR represents a more integrated and environmentally

sound production system.
4.3.3.3. Example transformity expressions for an industrial park. We
now explicate some more equations for industrial park process using
transformity expressions. To complete this explanation we return to
Fig. 3. In this situation there are two production processes or facilities.
The facilities include a joint electric power and heat production plant
and a painting factory. The major products or outputs of these
facilities are electricity and painted board. Heat is generated with the
electricity and is commodied, it is considered a co-product of
electrical power production. The y ash is a kind of waste with the
possibility of being reused or recycled as building materials, so it is a
split byproduct of electric power generation. The used paint here is
the split. To exemplify specic transformity expressions for various
processes we use the general denition of transformity. Transformity
of a process X (TransfX) is equal to the total emergy of that process
divided by the total energy. As an example for each of the processes in
Fig. 3 we have:
Transf Electricity = R1 + N1 + F1 = EnergyElectricity
Transf heat = R1 + N1 + F1 = EnergyElectricity
Transf fly ash = R1 + N1 + F1 = Energyfly ash
Transf unused paint = Transf original

paint

Transf painted board = R1 + N1 + F1 + R2 + N2 + F2 = Masspainted board :

4.3.3.4. Recycling Benet Ratio. If there are decreased demands for

input resources, we can calculate the emergy saving by the
substitution of waste that is reused or recycled (EmRW). Thus, we
can calculate a new indicator of Recycling Benet Ratio as follows:
WRR = EmRW = I + EmRW :
This indicator divides the emergy savings by the prospective
emergy imported, assuming a substitution does not exist. It reects
the systematic perspective of resource conservation and recycling.
4.4. Aggregation to industrial park level
The last step of emergy analysis at the industrial park level is to
have a comprehensive assessment on the studied industrial park and
make appropriate suggestions to the industrial park managers so that
they can make informed decisions on their sustainable development
strategy. This step is the most imperative one as the signicance of
emergy analysis is not only to present quantitative data to those
stakeholders, but to help decision-makers identify their development
problems and seek an integrated approach towards sustainable
development.
5. China industrial park case study and application
In order to illustrate this method's feasibility and applicability
within an industrial park, a case study is presented. The case study
focuses on industrial park management within China. To set the stage
for the case study we initially begin with a background of previous
industrial park and environmental issues within China.
5.1. China, environment and industrial parks
Since the mid-1980s, the Chinese government's model for
industrial growth has concentrated on developing manufacturing
and export areas, commonly referred to as industrial parks. For

instance, in Northeast China, industrial activities make current water

shortages even worse, jeopardizing the health of local communities
and also the long-term economic viability of the region (Geng and
Ct, 2003). Under these circumstances, governmental agencies
urgently need a new sustainable development strategy to manage
the existing and still growing large number of industrial parks, in
order to be able to solve the problem and build an environmentally
sound production system.
In China industrial parks have been only evaluated by means of
approaches which addressed different perspectives, such as economic, environmental and management performance, with little or no
attention on the need for a comprehensive, holistic view (Geng et al.,
2008, 2009a, b; Li et al., 2004; Lu et al., 2003). Of course, this monothematic investigation procedure failed to reveal the internal relation
between economic activities and their impacts on local ecosystems.
For instance, Gross National Product (GNP) has been used as a key
indicator to evaluate the economic performance of industrial parks in
China (Zhou et al., 2003). But such a nancially-based indicator
cannot measure contributions from the local ecosystem to the public
goods since money is paid only to people for their work, not to the
environmental service generating resources or assimilating wastes.
Similarly, overall pollutant emissions data (i.e., total SO2 emission and
COD emission) have been used to evaluate the enviromental
performance of industrial parks. However, this method disregards
the crucial contribution of environmental services to human well
being and the pollution occurring when an ecosystem becomes
unable to perform its regulatory functions and does not identify the
global and real impacts of industrial development on local ecosystem's dynamics. Thus, to apply emergy analysis at the industrial park
setting China presents an opportunity for a contribution to practice
and research.
China has a number of evolving regulatory policies related to
industrial park and regional development programs and their
implication on the environment. One of these major policies is the
circular economy. The circular economy policy is meant to encourage
resource-use efciency and integrates cleaner production and
industrial ecology in a broader system encompassing industrial
rms, networks or chains of rms, eco-industrial parks, and regional
infrastructure to support resource optimization (Geng and Doberstein, 2008; Park et al., 2010; Sarkis and Zhu, 2008; Zhu et al., 2010).
As part of this regulatory effort, the government has set up various
demonstration projects to help exemplify environmental circular
economy initiatives at individual organizational, industrial parks and
zones, and municipal levels. These demonstration projects are meant
to show that winwin opportunities associated with environmental
and economic improvements can occur.
Given this economic and environmental situation in China, having
methodologies to effectively or more broadly evaluate performance
can help guide policies at national, regional, local and even industrial
park levels. Thus, the use of emergy analysis can prove benecial to
each and every one of these levels. In this situation, we are focusing on
an industrial park in Northeast China. We now present additional
information on the application of an emergy analysis to a case study
industrial park in Dalian, China.
5.2. The Dalian Economic Development Zone industrial park
The second largest industrial park in China, the Dalian Economic
Development Zone (DEDZ), was chosen as the case study site to help
apply the methodology. DEDZ is located in Dalian Municipality, China.
The city is located on the southern end of the Liaoning province in
northeast China, and has a municipal population of approximately
6 million people. Fig. 4 shows the geographical position of Dalian in
China. Dalian has witnessed massive modication of its economic
structure through industrial restructuring associated with the
transition from a command to a market economy during the last

Y. Geng et al. / Science of the Total Environment 408 (2010) 52735283

three decades. Similar to most urban regions in Eastern China, Dalian

has seen unprecedented growth. Its location on a peninsula with
signicant plant and sea life, make it even more sensitive to
environmental burdens. Due to its aesthetic qualities and temperate
climate, it is also a destination for tourists. Maintaining a pleasant and
clean environment is thus benecial to its economic well being. Given
these regional characteristics the Dalian municipal administration has
had a great desire to implement an eco-city program so as to
improve the region's overall eco-efciency. For example, almost 100
industrial plants have been closed because of economic inefciency
and environmental degradation (Geng et al., 2009a, b). The broad
environmental goals and supportive administration of this municipality made it an especially attractive case study location.
DEDZ was founded in 1984 and provides essentially the same
preferential policies, incentives, and exible measures as other special
economic zones in China. It has a planned area of nearly 72 km2,
including separate sections for industrial development and mixed
residential, nancial and commercial uses (Geng et al., 2006).
DEDZ functions in a similar manner as a small municipality that is
divided between three main areas industrial, commercial, and
residential with some limited agricultural activities within its
boundaries. In addition, a green corridor has been planned as a buffer
zone within its boundary in order to improve the local ecological
niche. In this paper, we mainly focus on the industrial system, which
occupies a land area of 14 km2. The total employment level within the
industrial zone was 136,500 people at the end of 2007.
In terms of its economic functions, DEDZ has become an important
showcase and basis for the development of an export-oriented
economy in the Dalian region. It is used to show the results of the
government's experiment with economic reform and also as important economic tools to attract foreign investment. The zone fosters the
development of new sectors and technology, which are needed to
help the economy diversify. It is the most active area in Dalian for
foreign investment, serving as basis for the parent city to readjust
their industrial structures and renovate old enterprises, as well as
providing places where Chinese methods of enterprise management
are changing to adapt to the norms of international management
practice.

5279

necessary information and data for emergy analysis. A small

workshop was initially held by the research team so that the
signicance and the target of this study were explained to the local
stakeholders, including governmental ofcials at DEDZ and some key
company managers. This approach was necessary to build stakeholder
knowledge of the activities but also to gather data and gain further
cooperation. With their support and guidance, relevant reports, such
as the local yearly statistics books, government planning documents,
and environmental reports of key companies within the development
zone, were collected. Knowledge experts and ofcials at the statistics
and planning bureaus within DEDZ and key managers in some
companies were interviewed. These interviews helped to validate
data from archival and secondary sources, but also provided more
background information on their environmental management efforts.
This information was further integrated into the indicators. A total of
14 people within the research teams and hundreds of pages of
archival and company documentation, outside the research team's
own secondary data results, were acquired from workshop and
corporate participants (Figs. 57).
In setting up the data, we made sure to utilize the latest emergy
baselines. In the year 2000, total emergy contribution to the geobiosphere has been recalculated from 9.44 E24 seJ/yr to 15.83 E24 seJ/yr
(Odum et al., 2000). The increase in the global emergy reference base
to 15.83 E24 seJ/yr requires an update of all emergy values which
directly and indirectly were derived from the value of global annual
empower. In this paper we refer to the new biosphere baseline, which
means that emergy values calculated prior to that year are multiplied
by 1.68 (the ratio of 15.83/9.44).
5.3.2. Data categorization
The collected data were evaluated, summarized, and then
categorized into different groups. The major groupings included
renewable inputs, non-renewable inputs, imported sources, and labor
and service inputs (see Table 1). There were some characterizations
required for the various outputs. Identication and evaluations of
byproduct categorizations, splits and co-products were also completed by the research team.

5.3.1. Data acquisition

A detailed survey was completed at DEDZ by research teams from
the Chinese Academy of Sciences' Institute of Applied Ecology and
Dalian University of Technology in early 2008 in order to collect

5.3.3. Determining emergy indicators and Industrial Park valuations

In order not to have to calculate the emergy in resources and
commodities every time a process is evaluated, transformities that
have been previously calculated were used. Transformities from other
secondary resources (other researchers) may not be a perfect t for
the case under study, but it was felt that these sources represent,
initially, the Dalian DEDZ, at an acceptable level. When the case study
system is embedded in an environmental, social and economic
situation that signicantly differed than information from other
research publications, transformities may signicantly vary, since
they are time, technology and location specic. A careful evaluation of
the transformity descriptions were evaluated to make sure that the

Fig. 4. The location of Dalian in China.

Fig. 5. The emergy of renewable inputs at DEDZ.

5.3. Application of the emergy synthesis and analysis methodology to

DEDZ

5280

Y. Geng et al. / Science of the Total Environment 408 (2010) 52735283

Fig. 6. The emergy of non-renewable inputs at DEDZ.

selected transformities were not relatively similar than in DEDZ. The

research team used multiple team evaluators to arrive at those
transformities that were deemed similar and those that were deemed
too different.
Table 1 shows the emergy evaluation of the DEDZ system. All input
materials, energy, services and labor were listed and converted to
emergy by means of appropriate conversion factors.
As a coastal industrial zone, the tide and waves are the dominant
renewable inputs according to emergy accounting. This situation
reects the ocean's signicant impact on the local ecosystem. In
addition, seawater is widely used by local petrochemical companies
and power plants directly or through desalination, with a total
amount of 300,000 tons per day, showing the great value of ocean
resources to industrial production.
There is a local mining enterprise in DEDZ where most of the
minerals exploited are allocated to the local construction system.
Since the land geography is almost completely construction or garden
land, we didn't consider top soil loss as non-renewable inputs in this
case.
Fossil fuel is still the dominant energy source for DEDZ industrial
growth, even though this industrial zone is primarily a knowledgeintensive and technology-intensive industrial area. This fuel usage
characteristic is mainly due to a large oil renery company and two
large power plants. The service for crude oil is much larger than coal,
although their emergy valuation is close. This result shows that the
crude oil importing process carries much higher services compared to
domestic coal exploitation and transportation.
During the time of this study DEDZ has initiated its own ecoindustrial park project. Activities include cleaner production initiatives at the company level and byproduct exchange activities at the
inter-rm level. In 2006, the total industrial solid waste is
205,000 tons, and 83% of the waste are collected and recycled.
Among them, about 46.5% of waste is reused or recycled directly by
the local industrial system. Fig. 8 shows the reused and recycled solid
waste inside the industrial system.
Besides solid waste reductions, DEDZ reduced use of 7.5 million
tons of fresh water per year due to an integrated seawater utilization

Fig. 7. The emergy of imported resources and services at DEDZ.

system. The y ash and slag outputs are used for replacing cement
within a brick factory. The total emergy saved by the water saving and
waste utilization is shown in Table 2.
Table 3 summarizes the aggregated emergy ows, where different
data depicts different aspects of this industrial park's sustainable
development level. And the total performance indices and ratios were
calculated in Table 4.
Results show the current development situations of DEDZ. For
instance, emergy/money ratio without L&S is 1.56E+13, which is
about 3.2 times the average China rate (4.90E+12) for the year 2004.
This result points to the highly industrialization and materialization
levels of the Chinese industrial park. DEDZ is a high-tech based park
compared to most Chinese industrial parks, however, the rapid
growth of industrial added value is still mainly driven by the
consumption of fossil fuel and materials.
ELR with/without L&S is relatively high, which means the
industrial production activities put great stress on the local resource
conservation and environmental services. That is, the local environment is overloaded. Nevertheless, we can't ignore the waste
reutilization's prot based on the emergy accounting. WRR is about
4%, which means that 4% of the material used is from local waste
owing to the byproduct reuse and recycling both at the individual
company level and at the industrial cluster level initiated by the DEDZ
managers. Although this rate is still lower, it clearly depicts that the
zone management is making progress on improving their overall
material efciency.
A longitudinal analysis is required to truly determine whether
improvements have been made. Utilizing the newly developed
emergy calculations for industrial parks in this paper will more easily
allow government administrators and industrial park managers to
benchmark improvements.

5.4. Practitioner and stakeholder feedback

When the results of this case study emergy analysis were delivered
to DEDZ managers and related stakeholders, there was a sense of
frustration on these initial results. The industrial park managers had
been very passionate about meeting various Chinese government EIP
standards. This industrial park had almost met the entire national EIP
standards, from the 21 indicators in these standards they had reached
17 (Geng et al., 2008). It was realized that a careful explanation was
required for the difference between the emergy indicators and the
national EIP indicators, especially the unique systematic indicator ESI
and Recycling Benet Ratio WRR.
With careful explication the managers began to realize the utility
of the emergy analysis. The national EIP indicators did not consider
the contribution of the local ecosystem to the industrial park
development and also ignored expansion of industrial symbiosis
efforts. For instance, in DEDZ, one large renery rm represented 90%
of fresh water consumption for the whole park, while other rms are
not water-consumption based. Thus, in order to reach the industrial
water reuse ratio (the national EIP standard has a ratio requiring
75% water reuse), the park managers can simply ask this rm to
increase its water efciency. The emergy analysis allowed these
managers to more fully comprehend other possibilities for meeting
these goals through industrial symbiotic measures for waste water.
Water is common input for every manufacturing rm. Reclaimed
wastewater has signicant potential to be reused by industrial rms
for cooling purposes, watering local gardens and even ushing toilets
with careful design. These types of insights may not have been
uncovered without the newly introduced emergy indicators. Consequently, they felt that the emergy indicators can provide a broader
and more holistic picture of their overall performance and management of their industrial parks. The industrial park managers and other
stakeholders expressed their interests in future collaboration.

Y. Geng et al. / Science of the Total Environment 408 (2010) 52735283

5281

Table 1
Emergy ows of DEDZ in 2006.
Item

Unit

Amount

transformity (seJ/unit)

Ref. for transf.

Solar emergy (seJ/yr)

Emcurrency (em$/yr)

Renewable inputs
1 Sunlight
2 Wind (kinetic energy)
3a Rain (chemical potential energy)
3b Rain (geopotential energy)
4 Waves (kinetic energy)
5 Tide (geopotential energy)
6 Geothermal Heat

J/yr
J/yr
J/yr
J/yr
J/yr
J/yr
J/yr

5.44E+16
3.30E+14
3.80E+13
6.25E+13
5.56E+14
1.74E+15
3.01E+13

1.00E+00
2.51E+03
3.50E+04
1.76E+04
5.12E+04
2.82E+04
5.80E+04

By denition
[a]
[a]
[a]
[a]
[a]
[a]

5.44E+16
8.27E+17
1.33E+18
1.10E+18
2.85E+19
4.92E+19
1.75E+18

1.11E+04
1.69E+05
2.72E+05
2.25E+05
5.81E+06
1.00E+07
3.57E+05

Non-renewable inputs
7 Granite and gneiss
8 Shale
9 Clay
10 Quartz

g/yr
g/yr
g/yr
g/yr

8.73E+11
1.27E+11
1.79E+10
8.43E+11

8.40E+08
1.68E+09
3.36E+09
1.68E+09

[a]
[a]
[a]
[a]

7.33E+20
2.14E+20
6.00E+19
1.42E+21

1.50E+08
4.37E+07
1.23E+07
2.89E+08

Imported sources
11 Piped water from aqueduct
12 Coal
13 Coke
14 Diesel fuel
15 Gasoline
16 Crude oil
17 Maize

g/yr
J/yr
J/yr
J/yr
J/yr
J/yr
J/yr

18 Soybean

J/yr

19 Seafood
20 Vegetable

J/yr
g/yr

21
22
23
24

Fruit
Timber
Cotton
Wool

J/yr
J/yr
J/yr
J/yr

25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32

Leather
Steel and iron
Copper
Aluminium
Plastic and rubber
Resin
Glass
Paper

J/yr
g/yr
g/yr
g/yr
g/yr
g/yr
g/yr
g/yr

2.46E+13
4.11E+17
2.50E+14
5.39E+16
1.49E+09
3.61E+17
1.69E+14
1.13E+13
2.63E+14
5.85E+13
1.47E+15
3.20E+09
1.23E+10
3.00E+11
1.27E+14
2.96E+13
1.79E+12
1.74E+11
2.07E+12
4.48E+08
1.62E+07
2.51E+06
1.54E+07
1.12E+10
1.16E+07
4.23E+10

2.27E+04
6.71E+04
6.71E+04
1.11E+05
1.11E+05
9.07E+04
6.62E+05
8.51E+04
3.66E+05
8.51E+04
8.51E+04
5.51E+05
2.66E+05
8.51E+04
4.53E+04
1.06E+06
7.39E+06
8.51E+04
1.44E+07
3.16E+09
3.36E+09
1.44E+09
9.68E+09
5.51E+09
2.77E+07
6.55E+09

[b]
[c]
[c]
[d]
[c]
[c]
[e]
[f]
[e]
[f]
[f]
[g]
[f]
[f]
[h]
[e]
[a]
[f]
[a]
[i]
[j]
[c]
[k]
[k]
[l]
[d]

5.58E+17
2.76E+22
1.68E+19
5.98E+21
1.66E+14
3.28E+22
1.12E+20
9.59E+17
9.63E+19
4.98E+18
1.25E+20
1.76E+15
3.27E+15
2.55E+16
5.76E+18
3.14E+19
1.32E+19
1.48E+16
2.98E+19
1.42E+18
5.44E+16
3.61E+15
1.49E+17
6.14E+19
3.21E+14
2.77E+20

1.14E+05
5.63E+09
3.43E+06
1.22E+09
3.38E+01
6.70E+09
2.28E+07
1.96E+05
1.97E+07
1.02E+06
2.55E+07
3.60E+02
6.68E+02
5.22E+03
1.18E+06
6.40E+06
2.71E+06
3.03E+03
6.09E+06
2.89E+05
1.11E+04
7.37E+02
3.04E+04
1.26E+07
6.57E+01
5.66E+07

$/yr
$/yr

3.57E+08
5.30E+09

4.90E+12
4.90E+12

[m]
[m]

1.75E+21
2.59E+22

3.57E+08
5.30E+09

Labor and service

33 Labor
34 Service

[a] From Odum et al., 2000;[b] average from Odum Ortega, Comar, 2000;[c] from Odum, 1996;[d] from Brown and Arding, 1991;[e] calculated from Brandt-Williams, 2002;[f] calculated
from this work (the local agricultural system emergy analysis);[g] from Comar, 2000;[h] from Tilley, 1999;[i] from Bargigli and Ulgiati, 2003;[j] from Brown and Ulgiati, 2004a, b;[k]
Buranakarn, 1998;[l] from Brown and Ulgiati, 2001;[m] revised from Jiang et al., 2008.

A lesson learned from this feedback is that careful education of

industrial park personnel and managers, as well as other stakeholders
who will utilize these results, is necessary to fully appreciate the
capabilities of emergy analysis. Part of this education should include
transparency and visibility to previous and other data, indicators and
analyses. A comparative analysis and explanation will be required to
existing techniques and approaches if stakeholders are willing to
adopt and apply emergy analyses.

Fig. 8. Reused and recycled industrial waste at DEDZ.

6. Discussion and conclusions

Developing an ecologically conscious industrial park requires
analysis of both industrial and ecological systems. Traditional
methods have not been able to fully meet this requirement, usually

Table 2
Emergy saving accounting by waste reusing and recycling.
Item

Unit

Amount
(g)

Transformity
(seJ/Unit)

Ref. of
Transf.

Emergy
(seJ/yr)

Fresh water
Cement with y ash
(material savings)
Metal
Plastic
Paper
Dangerous waste
EmRW

g/yr
g/yr

7.50E+13
4.13E+10

2.27E+04
1.68E+09

[a]
[b]

1.70E+18
6.94E+19

g/yr
g/yr
g/yr

1.99E+10
1.14E+10
1.71E+10
5.70E+09

1.14E+11
9.68E+09
6.55E+09
n.a.

[c]
[d]
[e]

2.27E+21
1.10E+20
1.12E+20

2.56E+21

[a] Average Odum Ortega, Comar, 2000;[b] from Brown and Buranakarn, 2000;[c] from
Brown et al., 1992;[d] from Buranakarn, 1998;[e]Brown and Arding, 1991.

5282

Y. Geng et al. / Science of the Total Environment 408 (2010) 52735283

Table 3
Aggregated emergy ow of DEDZ in 2006.
Variable Item

Emergy
(seJ/yr)

Emcurrency
(Em$/yr)

R
N
I
L
S
U
U

4.92E+19
2.42E+21
6.71E+22
1.75E+21
2.59E+22
9.73E+22
6.96E+22

1.00E+07
4.95E+08
1.37E+10
3.57E+08
5.30E+09
1.99E+10
1.42E+10

Renewable sources
Non-renewable resources from within system
Imported resources (without L&S)
Labor
Service
Total emergy use (with L&S)=R+ N + I+ L + S
Total emergy use (without L&S)=R + N + I

due to consideration of environmental concerns as secondary to

economic objectives. Such methods focus primarily on the environmental impact of emissions and ignore the contribution of ecological
products and services. Emergy analysis offers a new, complementary
to other evaluation tools, thermodynamic approach to evaluate an
industrial park's eco-efciency as it includes the input from both
ecological and economic resources and studies ecological and
industrial processes together. It provides insight into the environmental performance and sustainability of an industrial park. This
paper introduces the use of emergy analysis to the industrial park
level of analysis.
From the case study at DEDZ, we can see the value of this method
on evaluating the overall eco-efciency of an industrial park. Relevant
results and data could provide decision support to industrial park
managers and government administrators so that they can make
appropriate policies towards sustainable development or maturation
of their industrial parks to EIPs. This study reveals that the EIP effort
represents a promising strategy to promote sustainable industrial
development. This strategy is promising because EIPs offer strategies
to achieve greater efciency through economies of systems integration, where partnerships between businesses meet common service,
transportation, and infrastructure needs (Chiu, 2002). While it draws
from pollution prevention approaches focusing on the efciency of
individual rms, the unique contribution of the EIP initiative is its
emphasis on inter-rm resource exchange linkages (Ulgiati et al.,
2007; Schnitzer and Ulgiati, 2007; Zhu et al., 2007; Zhu and Cote,
2004). Just as in natural ecosystems, interconnected entities form
symbiotic relationships to assure survival and resource efciency. For
business, value is added as its waste byproducts, water, and energy
are cycled back into the overall production stream of local region
(Geng and Doberstein, 2008). Such a closing of the loop results into
higher conservation of natural resources and lower disposal and
production costs. These benets that EIPs provide can also serve as
incentives for tenant companies to improve their environmental

Table 4
Emergy evaluation of DEDZ in 2006.
Intensive indicators
Variable

Item

Value

Unit

Emergy/money ratio

Specic emergy of monetary value

(with L&S) = U/GDP
Specic emergy of monetary value
(without L&S) = U/GDP
Emergy Yield Ratio
(with L&S) = U/(I + L + S)
Emergy Yield Ratio
(without L&S) = U/I
Environmental Loading Ratio
(with L&S) = (N + I + L + S)/(R)
Environmental Loading Ratio
(without L&S) = (N + I)/(R)
= EYR/ELR (with L&S)
= EYR/ELR (without L&S)
= EmRW/(EmRW + I)

2.19E+13

seJ/$

1.56E+13

seJ/$

Emergy/money ratio
EYR
EYR
ELR
ELR
ESI
ESI
WRR

1.03
1.04
1942.23
1414.53
0.0005283
0.0007330
3.96%

performance in terms of managing materials, energy and waste, and

encouraging local communities to invest in concepts incorporating
this approach to industrial development (Geng and Ct, 2002).
Consequently, it could improve the system's performance (translated
into better emergy-based indicators), thus increasing the sustainability levels of the industrial park.
Moreover, one of the emergy analysis's fundamental principles is
the maximum emergy principle, namely, systems that develop the
most useful work with inowing emergy sources by reinforcing
productive processes and overcoming limitations through system
organization will prevail in competition with others (Lotka, 1922a, b;
Odum, 1996). In the presence of increased scarcity of basic resources,
industrial parks will have to improve their conversion efciency for
maximum power output, together with an increased reliance on
locally available renewable emergy sources. The existence and
interactions of those companies that perform the functions of waste
collection, repair, reuse, remanufacture, and recycling will be key in
determining the ability of industrial parks to close material cycles and
function in a more sustainable manner, consequently, further towards
maximum power output.
Of course, things are not easy as they may appear. For instance, in
order to calculate the emergy-related indices of an industrial park, we
need to collect large amounts of data. Managers and entrepreneurs
may be reluctant to release their data, especially their emission data,
or may not even have that data available. The data collection process is
also a time-consuming activity and sometimes the difculty is
increased by the lack of local scale databases. Moreover, although
updated transformities for different items are available in published
literature, they are location and process specic and do not t
properly a different investigated case. Finally, sometimes to get the
transformities for new items is a big challenge, due to lack of reference
studies. These problems are found, however, not only in emergy
analysis, but are shared by other evaluation methods such as Life Cycle
Assessment, Material Flow Accounting, Ecological Footprints, among
others.
Despite these operational difculties, emergy analysis and synthesis still provide us with a new way for bridging industrial and
ecological systems. The quantied method of emergy analysis can
compensate the inability of money to value non-market inputs in a
scientically based way. Also, emergy analysis provides a holistic
alternative to many existing methods for environmentally friendly
decision making.
There are numerous opportunities for extending this work. To
address some of the data limitations, the use of emergy-based simulation
models and tools (see Lei and Wang, 2008) to help derive estimates and
scenarios may provide greater insights with emergy analysis. These
simulation models have been applied to larger regional locations and
scaling down to industrial park levels may be an interesting direction for
future research. For example, these emergy simulation tools may need
adjustment to incorporate some of the byproduct measures and waste
management developments presented here. Development of decision
support systems to evaluate alternative industrial park strategies may
also be a valuable direction for future research.
Generally, from results of the DEDZ, we can see that emergy
analysis method provides an eco-centric view of ecological and
human activities, which can be used for evaluating and improving
industrial activities. It has advantages over other methods for
evaluating industrial park's overall efciency as it can reveal the
value that free environmental services and resources offer to the
industrial park, especially when the decisions need to be made
regarding sustainability. Thus, it can be an important complementary
tool to the existing tool set for industrial park managers and
administrators interested in ecologically managing their industrial
parks. This study sets the stage for new level of analysis and
methodology that sets the foundation for serious and broadened
investigation of emergy analysis for industrial parks.

Y. Geng et al. / Science of the Total Environment 408 (2010) 52735283

Acknowledgements
This work is supported by the Natural Science Foundation of China
(71033004, 70772085), Chinese Academy of Science's one hundred
talent program (2008-318), the Shenyang Scientic Research Foundation (1091147-9-00), the Liaoning Science Foundation (20092078).
References
Allen TFH, Tainter JA, Hoekstra TW. Supply-side sustainability. New York: Columbia
University Press; 2002. 459 pp.
Bargigli S, Ulgiati S. Emergy and Life-cycle assessment of steel production. Biennial
Emergy Evaluation and Research Conference, 2nd, Gainesville, Florida. Emergy
Synthesis 2: Theory and Applications of the Emergy Methodology; 2003.
Bastianoni S, Campbell D, Susani L, Tiezzi E. The solar transformity of oil and petroleum
natural gas. Ecol Modell 2005;186:21220.
Beale F, Fernando M. Short-termism and genuineness in environmental initiatives: a
comparative case study of two oil companies. Eur Manage J 2009;27(1):2635.
Brandt-Williams SL. Folio #4. (2nd printing). Emergy of Florida Agriculture. Handbook
of emergy evaluation. A compendium of data for emergy computation. Gainsville.
FL. USA: Center for Environmental Policy. University of Florida; 2002.
Brown MT, Arding J. Transformities working paper. Gainesville. FL USA: Center for
Wetlands. University of Florida; 1991.
Brown MT, Buranakarn V. Emergy evaluation of material cycles and recycle options. In:
Brown, editor. Proceedings of the First Biennial Emergy Analysis Research
Conference. Gainesville. Fl. USA: Center for Environmental Policy. University of
Florida; 2000. p. 14154.
Brown MT, Ulgiati S. A quantitative method for determining carrying capacity for
economic investments. Int J Population Environ 2001;22(5):471501.
Brown MT, Ulgiati S. Emergy analysis and environmental accounting. In: Cleveland C,
editor. Encyclopedia of Energy. Elsevier, Oxford, UK: Academic Press; 2004a.
p. 32954.
Brown MT, Ulgiati S. Energy quality, emergy, and transformity: H.T. Odum's
contribution to quantifying and understanding systems. Ecol Modell 2004b;178:
20113.
Brown MT, Green P, And Gonzalez A, Venegas J. Emergy analysis perspectives, public
policy option, and development guidelines for the coastal zone of Nayarit. Mexico.
Emergy analysisi and public policy options. Gainesville. Fl USA: Center for Wetlands
and Water Resource. University of Florida; 1992.
Buranakarn V. 1998. Evaluation of recycling and reuse of building materials using the
emergy analysis method. Ph.D. thesis. University of Florida. Gainesville. FL. USA.
Chiu ASF. Eco-industrial development in Asian industrial estates. Proceedings of
European Commission Science & Technology Forum, World Summit for Sustainable
Development; 2002. 2 September 2002, Johannesburg.
Comar V. Emergy evaluation of organic and conventional horticultural production in
Botucatu. So Paulo State. Brazil. In: Brown, editor. Proceedings of the First Biennial
Emergy Analysis Research Conference. Gainesville. FL. USA: Center for Environmental Policy. University of Florida; 2000.
Ct R, Hall J. Industrial parks as ecosystems. J Cleaner Prod 1995;3(12):416.
Geng Y, Ct R. Scavengers and decomposers in an eco-industrial park. Int J Sustainable
Dev World Ecol 2002;9(4):33340.
Geng Y, Ct R. Environmental management system at the industrial park level. Environ
Manage 2003;31(6):78494.
Geng Y, Ct R. Applying industrial ecology in Asian rapidly industrializing countries.
Int J Sustainable Dev World Ecol 2004;11(1):6985.
Geng Y, Doberstein B. Developing the circular economy in China: challenges and
opportunities for achieving leapfrog development. Int J Sustainable Dev World
Ecol 2008;15(3):2319.
Geng Y, Zhao HX. Industrial park management in the Chinese environment. J Cleaner
Prod 2009;17(2009):128994.
Geng Y, et al. Planning report on circular economy for Dalian economic development
zone, government report, Dalian city; 2006 (in Chinese).
Geng Y, Haight M, Zhu QH. Eco-industrial development in China. Sustainable Dev
2007;14(5):3546.
Geng Y, Zhang P, Cote R, Qi Y. Evaluating the applicability of the Chinese eco-industrial park
standard in two industrial zones. Int J Sustainable Dev World Ecol 2008;15(6):54352.
Geng Y, Zhang P, Cote R, Fujita T. Assessment of the national EIP standard for promoting
industrial ecology in China. J Ind Ecol 2009a;13(1):1526.
Geng Y, Zhu QH, Doberstein B, Fujita T. Implementing China's circular economy at the
regional level: a case of Dalian. Waste Manage 2009b;29(2009):996-1002.
Hahn T, Figge F, Pinske J, Preuss L. Trade-offs in corporate sustainability: you can't have
your cake and eat it. Bus Strategy Environ 2010;19(4):21729.

5283

Hau J, Bakshi B. Promise and problems of emergy analysis. Ecol Modell 2004;178:
21525.
Holling CS. The resilience of terrestrial ecosystems: local surprise and global change. In:
Clark WC, Munn RE, editors. Sustainable development of the biosphere. New York:
Cambridge University Press; 1986.
Jiang MM, Zhou JB, Chen B, Chen GQ. Emergy-based ecological account for the Chinese
economy in 2004. Commun Nonlinear Sci Numer Simul 2008;13(10):233756.
Lei K, Wang Z. Emergy synthesis and simulation for Macao. Energy 2008;33(4):61325.
Li J, et al. Study on evaluation index of circular economy oriented enterprise
performance. China Population, Environ Resour 2004;14(4):1215 (in Chinese).
Lo CW, Leung SW. Environmental agency and public opinion in Guangzhou: the limits
of a popular approach to environmental governance. China Q 2000;163:677704.
Lotka AJ. Contribution to the energetics of evolution. Proc National Acad Sci, U.S.
1922a;8:14750.
Lotka AJ. Natural selection as a physical principle. Proc National Acad Sci 1922b;8:
1515.
Lu YT, et al. Research and application on sustainable development index in China. Nat
Ecol Conserv 2003;11:1722 (in Chinese).
Odum HT. Self organization, transformity, and information. Science 1988;242:1132.
Odum HT. Environmental accounting: emergy and environmental decision making.
New York: John Wiley and Sons; 1996. p. 370.
Odum HT. Emergy evaluation of an OTEC electrical power system. Energy 2000a;25:
38993.
Odum HT. Folio #2. Emergy of global process. Handbook of emergy evaluation. A
compendium of data for emergy computation. Gainsville. FL USA: Center for
Environmental Policy. University of Florida; 2000b.
Odum HT, Odum EC. A prosperous way down. Boulder, Colorado: University Press of
Colorado; 2001. 326 pp.
Odum H.T., Brown M.T. and Williams S.B., 2000. Handbook of emergy evaluation:
A compendium of data for emergy computation issued in a series of folios. Folio
No. 1 Introduction and Global Budget. Center for Environmental Policy, Environmental Engineering Sciences, Univ. of Florida, Gainesville, 16 pp., http://www.
emergysystems.org/folios.php).
Park J, Sarkis J, Wu Z. Creating integrated business and environmental value within the
context of China's circular economy and ecological modernization. J Cleaner Prod
2010;18(15):1494501.
Raugei M, Bargigli S, Ulgiati S. Emergy yield ratio problems and misapplications. In:
Brown MT, Campbell D, Comar V, Huang SL, Rydberg T, Tilley DR, Ulgiati S, editors.
Emergy synthesis. Theory and applications of the emergy methodology 3. Gainesville,
FL: The Center for Environmental Policy, University of Florida; 2005. p. 15963.
Sarkis J, Zhu Hanmin. J Syst Inf Technol 2008;10(3):20217.
Schnitzer H, Ulgiati S. Less bad is not good enough: approaching zero emissions
techniques and systems. J Cleaner Prod 2007;15:11859.
Tilley D.R. 1999. Emergy Basis of Forest Systems. PhD Dissertation. University of Florida.
310 pp.
Tilley DR. Ecosystems, Energy and Emergy: Evolving Ecological Engineering Designs.
University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science, Chesapeake Bay
Laboratory, Solomons; 2003.
Ulgiati S, Brown M. Monitoring patterns of sustainability in natural and man-made
ecosystems. Ecol Modell 1998;108:2336.
Ulgiati S, Bargigli S, Raugei M. Dotting the I's and crossing the T's of emergy synthesis:
Material ows, information and memory aspects, and performance indicators. In:
Brown MT, Campbell D, Comar V, Huang SL, Rydberg T, Tilley DR, Ulgiati S, editors.
Emergy synthesis. Theory and applications of the emergy methodology 3.
Gainesville Fl: The Center for Environmental Policy, University of Florida; 2005.
p. 199213.
Ulgiati S, Bargigli S, Raugei M. An emergy evaluation of complexity, information and
technology, towards maximum power and zero emissions. J Cleaner Prod 2007;15:
135972.
United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO). Industrial estates:
principles and practices. Vienna, Austria: UNIDO; 1997. 47 pp.
von Bertalanffy L. General system theory. New York: George Braziller Publ; 1968. 295 pp.
Wang L, Ni W, Li Z. Emergy and life cycle assessment of polygeneration systems.
Proceedings of the International Conference ECOS 2006; 2006. p. 80713. Aghia
Pelagia, Crete, Greece, July 1214, 2006.
Zhou GM, et al. Indicators on circular economy and eco-efciency. Urban Environ Urban
Ecol 2003;16(6):2013 (in Chinese).
Zhu Q, Cote R. Integrating green supply chain management into an embryonic ecoindustrial development: a case study of the Guitang Group. J Cleaner Prod 2004;12
(810):102535.
Zhu Q, Lowe E, Wei Y, Barnes D. Industrial symbiosis in China: a case study of the
Guitang Group. J Ind Ecol 2007;11(1):3142.
Zhu Q, Geng Y, Lai K-H. Circular economy practices among Chinese manufacturers
varying in environmental-oriented supply chain cooperation and the performance
implications. J Environ Manage 2010;91(6):132431.