Analysis on the relationship between eco-connectance and economic performance of an eco-industrial park

The establishment of eco-industrial parks (EIPs) has been regarded as a sustainable approach in solving environmental issues, including the energy crisis. Environmentalists have further recognised the formation of EIP as one of the effective solutions for waste minimization. In the context of industrial ecology, an EIP represents an urban industrial area where multiple industries cooperate together through the exchange of material and energy. The higher interchange of material and energy streams leads to a greater ownership over the process, resulting in greater fresh resource savings as compared to unilateral initiatives. Recent literature has reported various quantitative measures to design and implement an EIP. For instance, ecoconnectance (CE) has been proposed to quantify the level of connectivity in an EIP. CE is defined as the ratio of the number of actual linkages over the maximum number of potential linkages in an EIP. In the previous works, high level of CE is desirable to maximise resource savings. However, the effect of CE on the economic performance in an EIP has not been well studied. In this work, an optimization approach is developed to analyse the relationship between eco-connectance against the economic performance of an EIP. A hypothetical EIP network is synthesized to illustrate the proposed approach. Based on the result, it is noted that with a high eco-connectance, the resulting payback period of the EIP would be higher. This is a result of a higher number of participating industries, thereby increasing the initial capital expenditure.