Industrial Symbiosis And How To Engage Stakeholders

Industrial symbiosis (IS) promotes sustainability via resource-sharing among firms, yet faces challenges in implementation due to economic, regulatory, and technological barriers. Future success depends on innovation, policy support, and cross-sector collaboration to overcome these hurdles.

The CORALIS project demonstrates how industrial symbiosis (IS) facilitates decarbonization by enabling cross-industry collaboration, leading to resource optimization and sustainability enhancement across European demonstrators. Key findings highlight the importance of managerial frameworks, trust, stakeholder engagement, and local authority support in successful IS implementation.

The CORALIS report on industrial symbiosis (IS) highlights its benefits, like reducing CO2 emissions and waste through cross-sector collaboration. Successful cases and digital platforms facilitate IS, but adoption challenges persist. Future IS policies could further sustainability and create jobs in new industries.

The article addresses the importance of structured business agreements in industrial symbiosis (IS), categorizing IS relationships by engagement level and outlining key considerations for agreements including ownership, responsibilities, liabilities, risk management, governance, contractual terms, and adaptability based on the CORALIS project.

The European Commission issued guidelines to aid EU member states in adopting the Energy Efficiency Directive by October 2025. Recommendation 2024/2002 promotes an integrated approach to energy audits, management systems, and sustainability reporting, supporting compliance with broader EU directives.

This study explores the circular economy's waste-to-resource concept and analyzes startups impacting it. Key trends include waste upcycling, IoT-optimized waste management, AI-powered sorting, and blockchain for traceability. Circular economy startups are prominent in Western Europe, with growing activity in the US and Asia, particularly China and India.

European industries use digital tools for energy efficiency, as per a report with nine case studies, highlighting big data, AI for maintenance, demand response programs, collaboration importance, addressing high costs, and skill gaps, offering guidance for integrating technologies and fostering innovation for sustainability.

The IEA's Global Conference on Energy and AI highlighted the reciprocal relationship between both fields, focusing on AI's role in optimizing energy use and enhancing renewable energy adoption, while also acknowledging AI's growing energy demands. Key discussions addressed electricity consumption by data centers, advancements in battery tech, smart grid optimization, predictive capabilities for natural disasters, and international perspectives from companies and governments on AI-driven energy strategies. The IEA stressed its commitment to providing actionable data and fostering stakeholder dialogue to align AI with energy system realities, and announced a comprehensive energy-AI report for 2025.

The Agora Industry study outlines direct electrification's potential to fulfill 90% of industry's non-electrified energy demands in Europe by 2035, highlighting a key opportunity for CO2 reduction and progress towards EU climate targets.