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Potential Contribution to Carbon Neutrality Strategy from Industrial Symbiosis: Evidence from a Local Coal-Aluminum-Electricity-Steel Industrial System

Urban sustainability is a critical target under the sustainable development goals (SDGs), especially considering the response of cities to most of the resource and carbon footprints of human beings. The circular economy (CE) strategy offers an innovative and important pathway for forwarding sustainable urban development in terms of resource saving and waste mitigation. A particularly important measure of the circular economy is the urban industrial symbiosis, which, as an imitation of the ecological system, is viewed as an effective way to achieve the sustainable and low-carbon transformation of industries and downtown areas. However, evidence of its comprehensive environmental benefit is less reported. With this circumstance, this paper aims at identifying the environmental benefits of urban industrial symbiosis, with a focus on urban carbon footprints (CFP). With this basis, we shall also discuss the promotion of urban industrial symbiosis as a critical component in support of the carbon neutrality strategy. A hybrid approach integrating a process-based inventory analysis and an input–output analysis (IOA) is developed to analyze urban CFPs. Results imply that considerable savings in resources and the reduction of CFPs could be achieved via the coal-aluminum-electricity-steel industrial symbiosis. In detail, the eight designed synergies, with the aluminum-electricity-steel plants as the hubs, could reduce CO2 by 1.09 Mt per year, which accounted for 3.63% of the total CFPs in the city in a business-as-usual (BAU) scenario in 2012. This could partly offset the increase of CO2 emissions due to the economy’s expansion and realize a second mitigation effect apart from the efficiency change in technologies. A crucial understanding of the function of industrial symbiosis in accelerating the sustainable transformation of cities could then be reached. Finally, further implications on policy when tackling the gaps in regional eco-industrial development are proposed and discussed.