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Geostrategic Supply Risk and Economic Importance as Drivers for Implementation of Industrial Ecology Measures in a Nitrogen Fertilizer Production Company
Author(s) -
Malinauskienė Milda,
Kliopova Irina,
Hugi Christoph,
Staniškis Jurgis Kazimieras
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
journal of industrial ecology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.377
H-Index - 102
eISSN - 1530-9290
pISSN - 1088-1980
DOI - 10.1111/jiec.12561
Subject(s) - industrial symbiosis , industrial ecology , resource efficiency , resource (disambiguation) , environmental economics , production (economics) , criticality , business , supply chain , sustainable development , consumption (sociology) , environmental resource management , natural resource economics , environmental science , computer science , sustainability , ecology , economics , engineering , waste management , marketing , computer network , social science , physics , macroeconomics , sociology , nuclear physics , biology
Summary Among other concerns, safeguarding the supply chains of raw materials is an important task for industrial companies. Therefore, not surprisingly, the number of scientific publications concerning the evaluation of resource criticality has increased in recent years. However, it was noticed that currently published methodologies are too complex to be applied by industrial companies on a daily basis. For this reason, the need to develop a methodology that would allow not only assessing resource criticality, but could also be integrated into widely applied methodological frameworks as an additional driver to improve resource efficiency was identified. Geostrategic supply risk and economic importance were chosen as key indicators to analyze and assess relative resource criticality. The developed methodology was field tested by applying it to a resource‐intensive nitrogen fertilizer production company. Five scenarios for resource efficiency improvements, consisting of cleaner production and industrial symbiosis measures, were investigated. If all the proposed measures were implemented, consumption of natural gas would decrease by 3.552 million cubic meters per year (0.3% of the total consumption). However, not all identified measures contribute to a reduction of the overall criticality of resources for the production company. Nevertheless, the integration of criticality assessments into the widely applied methodologies for development and implementation of resource efficiency innovations is a valuable addition and should be included in the analysis for sustainable innovations and development.