For the last 20 years, the field of industrial symbiosis (IS) has raised interest among academics and industries. IS consists of dissimilar entities sharing and valorising underutilised resources such as materials, energy, information, services, or technologies in the view of increasing the industrial system’s circularity. Despite the benefits brought by IS, though, barriers hindering the full dissemination of IS remain. This paper presents a methodology developed in the framework of the H2020 European project EPOS that aims at removing some of the obstacles to the implementation of IS. The method follows a multidisciplinary approach that intents to trigger the interest of industry decision-makers and initiate efforts to optimise the use of energy and material resources through symbiosis. It is applied to an industrial cluster located in the Humber region of UK. The case study shows how the approach helped to identify several IS opportunities, how one particular high-potential symbiosis was further assessed, and how it led to the creation of a business case. It was estimated that the identified symbiosis could bring substantial economic (+2000 k€ pa), environmental (−4000 t of CO2 eq. pa) and social (+7 years of healthy life) gains to the region.

The European Union (EU) has put the concept of circularity at the heart of its strategy for transitioning towards a low-carbon economy and reducing the use of virgin resources. Concrete measures, such as clarifying rules on co-products or supporting innovative projects, have been taken in order to promote Industrial Symbiosis (IS)-turning one industry's co-product into another industry's raw material. However, one of the main barriers to the democratisation of IS remains the exchange of (confidential) data between industrial partners. Here, the concept of industrial sector blueprints is presented as a solution in order to overcome the challenge of sharing information across industrial sectors. A blueprint is constituted of a series of profiles providing insights on the key inputs and outputs of a given industry in terms of thermal and electrical energy, materials and services. A heuristic and comprehensive methodology is presented detailing a step-by-step approach for building the profiles and the type of data required. It is applied to a typical refinery demonstrating the efficiency of the method and showing how it can be used in an IS context.