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To promote the coordinated and healthy development of ecology and economy of Huaihe River Economic Belt, the paper tries to make an exploration of the path of industrial eco-efficiency improvement. This study chooses 25 prefecture-level cities in Huaihe River Economic Belt of China as the case studies, then selects Slacks-Based Measure with Undesirable (SBM-Undesirable) model, Malmquist-Luenberger (ML) index and Kernel Density Estimation and analyses the characteristics of industrial eco-efficiency from 2010 to 2019. Then, the spatial distribution characteristics of industrial eco-efficiency were investigated based on Exploratory Spatial Data Analysis (ESDA). The results of the above situation indicate that: (1) The overall efficiency level of industrial eco-efficiency of the Huaihe River Economic Belt has been relatively low from 2009 to 2018. The efficiency growth of regional industrial eco-efficiency showed a distribution pattern that the Eastern Sea-River–Lake Linkage Zone was greater than that in the Northern Huaihai Economic Zone and that in the Midwestern Inland Rising Zone. (2) The kernel density curve of industrial eco-efficiency shifts to the right, the efficiency increases but the internal difference was great. The Technical Change (TC) index decomposed from ML index is the key factor affecting the industrial eco-efficiency. (3) The industrial eco-efficiency of the Huaihe River Economic Belt shows a decreasing trend from the northeast to the southwest, and the efficiency changes greatly in the north–south direction, with obvious spatial agglomeration, strong spatial stability and dependence. Therefore, this study estimated the ratio of the economic and ecological output to the input required for industrial production and focused on the identification of differences of efficiency. It was conducive to transforming the mode of industrial development and promoting the harmonious development of industrial ecology, and taking the road of sustainable development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China had approved to construct 49 urban mineral industry demonstration bases from 2010 to 2015, which indicated that the Chinese Resource Recycling Industry (RRI) has been transferred into the social circulation patterns process after experiencing a micro-pattern and park-pattern. With the rapid progress of industrial process, the RRI presents some features just like system relationship is increasingly tight coupling, technology integration and innovation are accelerating, affecting factors are more complex, policy response is more sensitive, etc. All these changes have made the research of industry ecosystem symbiosis more complicated. In this paper, we divide the renewable resource recycling system into "management, marketization, supply, recovery, resource" five sub-systems firstly, then analyze the industry ecosystem symbiotic relationship by integrating the use of complex system theory and catastrophe progression model. Secondly, we establish the comprehensive evaluation index system including symbiosis mode, symbiosis environment and symbiosis level. We conduct Catastrophe Progression Method (CPM) into the comprehensive evaluation of the industrial symbiosis ecosystem. By using the control variables and state variables of CPM, the key factors and indexes changes are described. Finally, the model and method are utilized for evaluating Hunan Miluo Recycling Economy Industrial Park development between 2013 and 2018. The results are found to be coincident with a practical situation, which proves that the catastrophe progression method works well. The method is proved to be feasible in practice and has high objectivity and reference value. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The challenges of environmental protection are especially prevalent in South and Southeast Asian nations, which adversely affects their sustainable developmental goals. During the last two decades, increased industrialization and urbanization have caused massive air pollution, particularly in the most industrialized and densely populated countries. Due to China's fast economic expansion and development, the demand for natural resources has increased, resulting in climate change, biodiversity loss, soil degradation, and environmental risks. China's ecological footprint has been the subject of little investigation on the premises of a circular economy. This study used a literature review methodology on the critical key factors that hinder or facilitate the transition of a linear economy towards a circular economy. Further, based on the literature review, this study used industrial ecology, energy efficiency, and waste recycling technology factors to analyze the role of the circular economy on the country's environmental sustainability agenda for the period of 1975–2020. The results show that in the short run, the link between ecological footprints and per capita income is monotonically decreasing; however, in the long run, the relationship is U-shaped. In both the short and long run, waste recycling technology and cleaner manufacturing significantly decrease ecological footprints. Renewable energy consumption increases ecological footprints in the short run but decreases them in the long run. The management of natural resources reduces ecological footprints to support the 'resource blessing' hypothesis. The Granger causality corroborated the unidirectional relationship between ecological footprints, oil rents, and urbanization and ecological footprints. In addition, economic growth Granger causes industrialization and waste recycling technology while green energy Granger causes economic growth, industrialization, and recycling technology. The two-way link between economic development and urbanization exists within a nation. The variance decomposition analysis (VDA) predicts that in the future, China's natural resources, green energy demand, and technological spillover will limit its ecological footprint through material and technology efficiency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is an important component of national security, and also a required driver for coordinating development and security and building a new pattern of development to maintain the security and stability of and enhance the independent controllability of industrial and supply chains. According to the principles of taking enterprises as the mainstay, coordinating points and chains, combining advantages and disadvantages, adopting classified policies, and linking internal and external chains, the three industrial chains should be planned as a whole for the purpose of their coordinated and efficient operation, so as to solidly enhance, supplement, optimize, and consolidate industrial and supply chains, enhance support to the core links of industrial chains, exploit preponderant and advantageous links, accelerate the incubation of leading and hidden champion enterprises in the industrial ecology, promote the coordination between central and local governments, optimize the policy support system for the modernization of industrial chains, deepen international cooperation among industrial chains, expedite the construction of independent, controllable, safe, and efficient industrial and supply chains, and significantly improve the stability, international competitiveness, and modernization of China's industrial and supply chains. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The insufficient innovation ability is the biggest bottleneck for the upgrading of creative industry in China. Thus, it is an important way to structure the good R&D innovative ecosystem around perfecting the innovative chain for improving the innovation ability of creative industry. This paper discusses the theoretical connotation of the R&D innovation ecosystem of creative industry, studies the spatial structure of the R&D innovation ecosystem, and proposes the fact that the innovative population of R&D innovation ecosystem in creative industry can be divided into original innovative population, technological innovation population, innovation service population, innovation input population, and system innovation population. The research on the demand, financing, and business model of R&D breakthrough innovation in China's industry cannot be separated from the analysis of the evolution stages of various industries, because different strategies need to be formulated at different stages of development, and it is very important to accurately grasp the stage of industrial development. By introducing logistic curve equation, the breakthrough innovation of industrial R&D is divided into four stages: incubation stage, growth stage, evolution stage, and maturity stage, and the different characteristics of different stages of industry development are analyzed. Taking the breakthrough innovation of R&D in industry as an example, this paper uses the logistic empirical model based on factor analysis to study it. The results show that the breakthrough innovation of R&D in industry has entered a maturity stage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aluminum production is a major energy consumer and source of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The regional transfer of the primary aluminum (PA) industry, which mainly consists of the processes of electrolysis and aluminum ingot casting, is currently an important international trend in aluminum industrial development. However, the changes in GHG emissions from aluminum production for such transfers are unclear. This study has established a life cycle assessment model of aluminum industry based on regional transfers in the context of China, determined the GHG emissions of PA and secondary aluminum (SA) production, examined the GHG emission changes of PA production based on regional industry transfer between the years 2007 and 2017, and explored seven driving factors that affect GHG emissions in the aluminum industry. GHG emissions per unit PA and SA production in China decreased by 18.6% and 6.3%, respectively, but the total GHG emissions from aluminum industry still increased by 2.2 times between the years 2007 and 2017. The driving factor analysis showed that the major positive effects of GHG emissions from China's aluminum industry from 2007 to 2017 included the production scale effect of SA and the energy structure effect. Existing regional transfers (between the years 2007 and 2017) did not deliver significant annual GHG emissions reductions. Currently, Xinjiang, Henan, Shandong, and Inner Mongolia are the main PA production provinces in China, although regional transfers have been implemented. This study provides a basis for the improvement and sustainable development of the aluminum industry, suggests policies for regional aluminum development, and proposes a beneficial layout of the aluminum industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China has emerged as the second largest economy in the world during the globalization in the last forty years. However, in the last decade, Chinese manufacturing has also demonstrated its dark side causing wide range of concerns globally and directly jeopardize people's health because of serious pollutions. How could the world keep its industrialization yet without damages to the natural environment? The paper proposes a new framework entitled 'IE³' by integrating three domains of knowledge--Industrial Entrepreneurship, Industrial Engineering and Industrial Ecology. The IE³ model provides a potential answer to the future development pathway for industrialization, changing from pursuit of quantity to quality via considering resources efficiency and ecology efficiency. The novelty of the research lies in incorporating three originally separated theories into a comprehensive system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As the foundation of modern economic development, industry is the engine of industrialized and urbanized development. Industrial ecology is a high-level form of industry that is achieved after it has reached a certain stage, which guides the coordinated industrial development balancing mankind and nature. The implementation of industrial ecology is an important method and effective approach to realize the sustainable development of industrialization and urbanization. In this article, based on the inter-provincial panel data of western China during 2003-2018, the spatial development trends of industrialization, urbanization and industrial ecology are analyzed, and an empirical method is employed to conduct a robustness test based on the Panel Vector Auto-Regression (PVAR) model to determine the long-term interactions among these three aspects. The results show that it is difficult to manifest the short-term causal relationships among industrialization, urbanization and industrial ecology. After lagging for three periods, they present the Granger causality, the industrial ecology and industrialization have promoted urbanization, and the coefficient for the influence of industrial ecology on urbanization is 0.4612. However, industrialization and urbanization have negative impacts on industrial ecology, and with a 1% increase in industrialization or urbanization, the industrial ecology will decline by 0.2261% or 0.2850%, respectively. With the continuation of the lagging period, industrial ecology will have better interpretability than industrialization and urbanization, and industrialization and eco-friendly development have strong self-accumulation development mechanisms, while the self-accumulation mechanism of urbanization is not obvious, and it might even have a decline. By fulfilling the role of the regional leading industry, the state of unbalanced internal development can be improved, so as to realize mutual promotion between industrialization and urbanization. By improving the utilization rates of resources and energy, efforts should be made to implement green production, significantly promote industrial ecology, and boost high-quality development of both the regional economy and society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The implementation of Digital China and Made in China 2025 strategies has brought guiding the rapid development of digital infrastructure (DI) and industrial ecology into focus. Based on Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei (BTH) city data from 2011 to 2020, this study empirically investigates the influence mechanism and spatial effect of DI and regional collaborative innovation (RCI) on industrial eco-efficiency (IEE) using the improved gravity model and super-efficiency slacks-based measure model. The relevant findings are as follows: (1) Static and dynamic analyses show that DI significantly improves IEE. (2) The moderating effect test shows that RCI strengthens the effect of DI on IEE. (3) The threshold effect test captures a U-shaped nonlinear relationship between DI and IEE at different RCI intervals. In the positive stage, the improvement effect of DI on IEE presents marginal increasing characteristics. (4) For the spatial perspective test, the BTH city's DI and IEE exhibit a positive spatial correlation, and gradually form H–H and L–L cluster states. Furthermore, the city's DI improves the local city's IEE and benefits neighboring city's IEE, revealing spatial spillover effect. This study has valuable reference significance for other regions to simultaneously solve industrial development and environmental problems by advancing DI. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights • Review the Chinese EIP development, modification courses of the standard system, and management mechanism. • Main changes and corresponding reasons among the series of EIP standards. • Shortcomings of the existing standard and outlook of EIP standard development. Abstract Eco-industrial Parks (EIP) have become a central element in China's industrial strategy to combine industrial development while minimizing environmental impacts and improving resource efficiency. National standard system has been developed as a main tool for assessing EIPs. This paper provides a review of the development of China's EIP standard system. The focus of the analysis is the new national demonstration EIP standard (HJ/T274-2015), including a review of calculation methods for some key indicators. The analysis also provides a comparison with previous standards to identify the main changes and improvements in the assessment of EIPs. Comparison findings illustrate that the new standard provides a more consistent indicator system by providing a consolidated standard system, and offering more comprehensive and quantitative indicators. Moreover, the new standard aims to better manage environmental issues by supplementing more comprehensive environmental indicators. The standard also strengthens the emphasis of the industrial symbiosis dimension in the evaluation of EIPs. By offering optional indicators and giving distinct targets based on contextual conditions for a number of indicators, the flexibility and rationality of the EIP assessments are also enhanced. Although many positive changes have been identified, there are still some shortcomings exist in the new EIP standard. The paper proposes a number of recommendations based on analyzing shortcomings, for instance further improving of the industrial symbiosis indicators, offering social benefit evaluation indicators, and strengthening the reduction action evaluation. China's experience of setting EIP standards and indicators may provide lessons for other countries' attempts to develop industrial estate indicators. In order to observe and effectively promote industrial estates at the global range, several remaining research questions that need further exploration are put forward in this study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: China has more than 1,500 industrial parks, which, collectively, play a crucial role in facilitating industrialization and urbanization. A key characteristic of these parks is that most rely on shareable energy infrastructure, an efficient configuration that can also deliver substantial and sustainable reductions in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. This study offers strategies for mitigating GHG emissions from Chinese industrial parks. We focus on extensive data collection for the 106 industrial parks listed in the national demonstration eco‐industrial park (EIP) program. In doing so, we carefully examine the evolution of 608 serviceable energy infrastructure units by vintage year, fuel type, energy output, and technologies of combined heat and power units. We assess direct GHG emissions from both energy infrastructure and the parks, and then identify the features and driving forces of energy infrastructure development in the EIPs. We also offer recommendations for ways to mitigate the GHG emissions from these industrial parks. The energy infrastructure stocks in Chinese EIPs are characterized by heavy coal dependence (87% of capacity) and high ratios of direct GHG emissions versus the total direct emissions of the park (median value: 75.2%). These findings establish a baseline from which both technology and policy decisions can then be made in an informed way. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the economic reform, China has actively participated in the global market with rapid industrialization and gradually dominated the utilization and consumption of some critical materials, one of which is copper. China has reigned the global anthropogenic cycle of copper since 2004. We explore copper flows along with the international trade of China during 1975–2015, through life cycle lens, from ore to final products. Our main finding is that China has become more active in the copper-related trade, indicated by its great increase in trade volume and the number of trade partners. The physical volume of copper flows through trade increased over 119 times between 1975 and 2015, mainly because of more imported raw materials of copper and exported copper products. Generally, China is a net importer of copper, with increasing import dependence through the study period, whereas the degree of dependence slightly decreased from 2010 to 2015. The indicator of Export Support Rate took a decreasing percentage, which has fallen about 35% since 2010. It suggests China's changing position in the global resource and manufacturing market. In terms of trade price of different copper products, the price of imported copper concentrate was noticeably higher than that of exported one, revealing the poor copper resource endowment of China; while the different trend of copper semis in recent years signifies that China is in urgent need to improve its capability of producing high value-added semis. From international trade perspective, the copper resource of China presented stable supply as well as demand. The One Belt One Road strategy proposed by the state will further expand both the resource and market of copper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In China, developing industries based on the regional resource endowment is an important approach to increase GDP in many regions in the past few decades. However, the extensive development pattern results in excessive consumption of natural resources and severe environmental pollution. Therefore, the concept of eco-industry and the theory of system engineering are combined and applied in this study. A new interactive inference method to construct industrial ecosystems is proposed. Firstly, a node information database is set up, and a material group is established according to the resource endowments in the selected region, and the construction rules are defined, such as the termination conditions. Then the structure of the ecosystem is obtained by an interactive inference process between the node information database and all possible combinations in the material group. After the supplement and elimination of nodes, an industrial ecosystem containing 34 nodes is obtained in a certain western region in China. After the industrial ecosystem constructed, a mathematical model is established to optimize the industrial ecosystem, and four aspects of objective functions, including resource efficiency, economic profit, environmental effect and comprehensive benefit, are optimized. After that, four scenarios are analyzed, and the indexes in each scenario are analyzed comparatively. Policy implications for China are proposed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Industrial park development has become a critical strategy to promote economic development in many countries since 1980s. Particularly, China is one key country to adopt such a method on enhancing its industrialization. However, rapid industrial park development has resulted in many issues, including resource depletion, environmental emissions and pressure on responding climate change. Industrial symbiosis has been proved that it has positive impacts on promoting resource utilization efficiency. Therefore, effective performance evaluation can help recognize the key barriers on industrial symbiosis of industrial parks so that more appropriate policies can be raised by considering the local realities. Emergy synthesis is one feasible method on addressing the contribution of local ecosystem to industrial park development due to its innovative perspectives and mature methodology, while impact, population, affluence, technology (IPAT) formula and index decomposition analysis (IDA) are suitable for identifying and quantitatively calculating the key impacts of various factors. This paper integrated emergy synthesis, IPAT formula and IDA methods together to investigate the impact factors of industrial symbiosis in an industrial park. A case study approach at Dalian Economic Development Area (DEDA) was carried out so that such an effort can be tested. The results show that waste reutilization by industrial symbiosis in DEDA increased by 3.0E+20 seJ from 2006 to 2010. Technological pressure for waste utilization by industrial symbiosis and energy structure of an industrial park had made negative effects on the waste reutilization from 2006 to 2010 in DEDA, while the efficiency of non-renewable energy consumption and emergy scale of an industrial park played positive effects on the waste reutilization. Among the four impact factors, technological pressure for waste utilization and the efficiency of non-renewable energy consumption took more significant impacts on the industrial symbiosis of DEDA than the other two factors, which contributed −1.92E+21 seJ and 2.18E+21 seJ for the waste reutilization by industrial symbiosis respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on the effects of policy instruments for developing viable eco-industrial parks (EIPs) in China. We analyzed the root of China's national EIP program and inventoried the general instruments available to local authorities to shape and promote eco-industrial development. Empirical research conducted in Tianjin Economic-technological Development Area and Dalian Development Area led to the activities and actions conducted by local authorities. A quantitative method, technique for order of preference by similarity to ideal solution, was adopted to reveal the effects of policy instruments for comparative analysis. We conclude that the planned EIP model is useful in the early stage of EIP development, and, subsequently, it should be combined with a facilitated model to achieve long-term goals for eco-transformation. To this end, the policy package of economic, regulatory, and voluntary instruments should be integrated and tailored in alignment with the local situation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The benefit evaluation of industrial symbiosis in industrial parks plays an important part in park management. This study aims to propose a comprehensive assessment method for industrial symbiosis benefits by combining resource productivity and considering the impact of emissions in emergy analysis. Besides, classify industrial symbiosis according to the exchange of materials, water, and energy to conduct an in-depth analysis of diverse symbiosis. The case study of an eco-industrial park in China shows that industrial symbiosis has a positive effect in many aspects, including increasing the productivity of direct input materials, water, and energy by 0.33, 36.50, and 0.38 times respectively, reducing the emission impact by 30.91%, saving economic investment equal to 30.18% of gross domestic product, reducing the environmental load rate by 23.88% and increasing the sustainable development index by 32.74%. Suggestions on building a symbiosis network are put forward by comparing the contributions of symbiosis types. This study provides park managers with a symbiosis classification and a benefit evaluation tool to build symbiosis networks and make policies for sustainable industrial development. • Industrial symbiosis is divided according to the exchange of materials, water and energy. • Resource productivity is added to identify the contribution of symbiosis. • Emissions' impact is considered to improve emergy indicators. • An approach to evaluate the performance of industrial symbiosis is proposed. • Suggestions for building a symbiosis network are put forward. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many studies indicated that industrialization and urbanization caused serious soil heavy metal pollution from industrialized age. However, fewer previous studies have conducted a combined analysis of the landscape pattern, urbanization, industrialization, and heavy metal pollution. This paper was aimed at exploring the relationships of heavy metals in the soil (Pb, Cu, Ni, As, Cd, Cr, Hg, and Zn) with landscape pattern, industrialisation, urbanisation in Taiyuan city using multivariate analysis. The multivariate analysis included correlation analysis, analysis of variance (ANOVA), independent-sample T test, and principal component analysis (PCA). Geographic information system (GIS) was also applied to determine the spatial distribution of the heavy metals. The spatial distribution maps showed that the heavy metal pollution of the soil was more serious in the centre of the study area. The results of the multivariate analysis indicated that the correlations among heavy metals were significant, and industrialisation could significantly affect the concentrations of some heavy metals. Landscape diversity showed a significant negative correlation with the heavy metal concentrations. The PCA showed that a two-factor model for heavy metal pollution, industrialisation, and the landscape pattern could effectively demonstrate the relationships between these variables. The model explained 86.71% of the total variance of the data. Moreover, the first factor was mainly loaded with the comprehensive pollution index (P), and the second factor was primarily loaded with landscape diversity and dominance (H and D). An ordination of 80 samples could show the pollution pattern of all the samples. The results revealed that local industrialisation caused heavy metal pollution of the soil, but such pollution could respond negatively to the landscape pattern. The results of the study could provide a basis for agricultural, suburban, and urban planning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: A regional industrial ecosystem faces the challenge of boundaries, which are barriers to its evolution and development. Crossing various boundaries is necessary in order to achieve extension of industrial ecosystems. This article described and analyzed the case of going beyond the sectoral boundary practice of the Hai Hua industrial ecosystem (HHIE) in China. In this case, the traditional planned economic system of China was the main reason for the existence of the sectoral boundary in HHIE. The sectoral boundary restricted the establishment of potential symbiotic linkages between companies. Going beyond the sectoral boundary was necessary in order to promote industrial ecosystem development. The government played a crucial role in breaking the sectoral boundary. It was “a key stage” in the development of HHIE. Breaking the sectoral boundary was achieved through the approach of establishing a salt-soda combination, i.e., establishing the Hai Hua Group (HHG). From this case, some conclusions on development of industrial ecosystems were drawn. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

As one branch of industrial ecology, the ecoindustrial park (EIP) concept is being accepted and implemented in many parts of the world. In order to pursue a sustainable industrial development, China's government is forging this concept into a new strategy of industrial development and regional practices. This article aims to depict a picture of current China's experiences on EIP. It first presents two stages of EIP development at national level. Then more details at individual level are provided by three cases studies, that is, Dafeng, Lubei, and Nanhai, in which three points are addressed: (1) the industrial and environmental backgrounds of EIP projects; (2) specific resource sharing; and (3) benefits and challenges in these projects. The case studies show that the government acts as a key role player, facilitating multiple functions in the development of EIP projects. The case studies also suggest that many factors including holistic, economic, social, and technical aspects need to be taken into account to develop a successful EIP project. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Circular economy and eco-industry are effective ways to solve sustainable development problems on resources, environment and economy. Starting from the large quantity, but low utilization of low chemical potential substance produced in China, the author points out the traditional industry development pattern in China is unsustainable and that it results in the depletion of available resources, and polluted environment, etc. Concerning the development pattern of linear economy in the process industry, the author puts forward a new mode for resources utilization—recycle of low chemical potential substance from the theoretic foundations and technological innovation, illustrates the natural science foundation and analyzes the recycle process of low chemical potential substances by giving the recycle of several typical low chemical potential substances as examples. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]