How Organization Models Impact the Governing of Industrial Symbiosis in Public Wastewater Management. An Explorative Study in Sweden

Abstract

The industrial symbiosis (IS) landscape is evolving rapidly. While previous studies have argued for the importance of municipalities participating in the governing of IS, research on the implications of different forms of municipal organization is still lacking. This paper aims to investigate how municipal administration and municipally-owned corporations, as two forms of organization, impact the governing of IS in the water and sewage sector. This is explored in relation to the Swedish municipality Simrishamn, which recently underwent changes in the form of organization. Results show that municipal administration contributes to a more inclusive process where many actors can influence and bring ideas and perspectives on how to develop an IS. The risk, however, is that other issues within the municipality are seen as more pressing and, therefore, get prioritized before IS. In corporate form, the development of IS becomes more business-like as the focus is kept on core business. Technology development is strengthened as skills and competencies are promoted through the expertise of the employees. Drawbacks include processes becoming less transparent and political goals, such as citizen welfare not receiving the same level of priority as within municipal administration. There is also a risk that fewer perspectives are included in the process of developing IS, which may inhibit innovation, even if the results also indicate that an increased business focus of the corporate form strengthens the innovation capacity.

Energy Self-Sufficiency Aiming for Sustainable Wastewater Systems: Are All Options Being Explored?

“…Nevertheless, this cannot be confirmed due to the lack of energy data for a number of the cases studied, particularly, for the smaller plants [20,47,52,69]. Another possible reason could be related to the availability of specialized management resources in larger plants, as usually happens in industrial organizations [67,[81][82][83]. This could also explain the fact that most of the plants have several renewable technologies installed.…”

“…Current WWTPs are dynamic organizations, with the need to adapt to a changing context, like many industrial businesses do [81,82]. However, the limitations of budget can often hinder their investments with higher restrictions than in the private sector, especially for smaller plants [13,82,83]. However, awareness of the technology, demand, and Secondly, in the cases where there is exchange out of the boundary limits, the significance of the KPIs varies [20,47,52,73].…”

“…If disclosure is increased and more affordable and reliable machinery is developed, hydropower might even be regarded as "low-hanging fruit," as energy efficiency measures in general already are [86], i.e., easy to identify and implement. This would enable managers of small wastewater systems to set achievable targets rather than attempting more sophisticated strategies [63,82,87]. It may pose an even more attractive option in those situations where new investments are extremely limited or important modifications of the treatment process or facilities present too high risks or constraints, as in the smaller wastewater systems [12,63,87].…”

Generalizing Normality: Different Estimation Methods for Skewed Information

“…The example presented by this paper is the modeling of water flux, which is an essential element that has been placed under stress by significant population growth and an increase in the demand for water supply (for agriculture, industrial processes, mineral extraction, and human consumption) [38]. Therefore, planning the logistics of excessive water decisions according to their probabilistic distributions helps in unraveling this complex task [39,40]; this can be initiated by the analysis of the water flux, especially when environmental factors present limited sources for the water levels.…”

Hydropower Technology for Sustainable Energy Generation in Wastewater Systems: Learning from the Experience

“…Several stakeholders must be involved for the effective implementation of new technologies to improve energy performance in the wastewater sector [5,34,35]. Global policies and incentives are usually promoted by national governments with competences for management of water services [5].…”