The Zero Emissions/Virtuality Link:

Introduction

What are the prospects for a virtual ecology of industry that can help us toward the goal of a micro-emissions economy? Recently the editors of The Journal of Industrial Ecology asked me to speculate about this question, which results I am pleased to share with your world virtual conference on Zero Emissions. To this, I shall add some first background materials on the program and interests of our work at Program for the Human Environment of Rockefeller University, together with a brief extract from the forward of a report that our group have just produced (with considerable help from collaborators, most of whom worked and contributed at quite some distance from our team) under the title, Industrial Ecology: Some Directions for Research (which is on-line and available to participants at http://phe.rockefeller.edu).

Cautious Optimism: A Mandate for Further Work & International Scientific Collaboration

My judgment is that many precedents offer encouragement. Continuous process industries, such as petrochemicals, have long sought to channel every input into profitable output. Chemical engineers already design and test refineries in detail on computers before companies buy the first length of pipe. Energy engineers have extended the concept of a petrochemical complex to a virtual "integrated energy system" which transforms crude oil and other energy materials, air, water, and other inputs into liquid fuels, electricity, heat, fertilizer, and other outputs with potentially zero emissions (ref. 1).

In the many industries which produce in batches rather than in continuous flows, design and analysis of integrated manufacturing systems have also advanced markedly (ref. 2). Weighing the wastes industries now create, opportunities must abound to handle materials better, reduce wastes, and design "custom" wastes that can re-enter the economy or be safely filed away (ref. 3). Modest extensions of the simulatory arts in sectors from automotive to pulp and paper may identify quickly and effectively the leverage for lifting plants toward these goals.

Leverage is a key word. One major reason to formalize the flows and relations within a plant into equations and computer code founded on sound data is to assess numerically the power to achieve outcomes with practical effort. In a virtual plant we want to discover the levers connected to the task and resting on a fulcrum near the task.

Above the level of the plant, fewer precedents for simulation exist. Nevertheless, Peter Ince's chart of the materials flowing from the forest into lumber, paper, and fuel invites simulation of the industrial ecology of wood products (ref. 4). Surely worthwhile occasions exist for researchers, consultants, and managers to build dynamic simulations of materials (and energy) flows at the level of an industrial sector. The vast yet overlooked services industries appear to be virtual virgins.

And then the challenge looms to capture the actual and potential flows across diverse sectors or enterprises at a useful level of detail. Surely we could simulate the touted collection of symbiotic industries in Kalundborg, Denmark, as well as imaginary Eco-Parks.

Some of the experiments industrial ecologists might wish to undertake will be excessively costly or risky unless we can build expert and public confidence through simulations. For strawberries, albeit modified with modern genetic means, field tests are hard enough. Before any material existence, the factory, firm, or landfill of the future may well be required to operate vividly and convincingly in our virtual goggles.

We know life holds incidents and interactions no simulation will ever capture. Had we modeled the ecology of medieval industry, would we have seen that low-cost linens effected by the spinning wheel would lead to abundant rags that could become cheap paper that would permit a printing industry? Perhaps not. But today we have a lot more waste to remodel. Let's begin. SimFactory and CyberEcoPark (ref. 5) may help.

The Rockefeller University's Program for the Human Environment

Since I have seized the Podium this morning, I would like in closing to share with you a few remarks on the work and objectives of our Program for the Human Environment at The Rockefeller University. As you will see, ours is a networking and collaborative exercise, much as this conference is attempting to promote.

The Program for the Human Environment recognizes the growing connection between the biological and other research underway at The Rockefeller University and environmental concerns. The Program houses research, organizes meetings on topics of interest to the campus community, hosts visiting scientists in environmental fields, and encourages collaborations between faculty and students. The Program is responsible for communicating widely the scientific results of environmental studies involving the University in an effort to inform environmental policies. It also houses selected studies concerned with the health of the scientific enterprise.

In addition to our core group on campus, we are networked with, and (over)stimulated by associates in New Haven, Cambridge, Woods Hole, D.C., California (north & south), Laxenburg, Florence, Budapest, Jerusalem, and elsewhere.

We continue to explore how long-run technical change relates to productivity and efficiency of energy, materials, land, and other resources, and the consequences for human populations. In essence we seek to elaborate the technical vision of a micro-emissions society. This vision is realized in part by our just completed report, Industrial Ecology: Some Directions for Research (i.e., on-line at http://phe.rockefeller.edu), the study of the network of industrial processes as they interact with each other and live off each other, especially in the sense of direct use of each other's material and energy wastes and products. We are working on diverse case studies of micro-emission travel, zero-emission power plants, the U.S. forests products sector, and cadmium (an element good for batteries and harmful to health and behavior). In analytical methods, we remain deeply interested in statistical analysis of long time-series of environment-related data, and models of growth and diffusion, especially Lotka-Volterra dynamical systems. We believe we can explain the past 200 years and predict a lot about the next 100; we hope to complete a book (CD-ROM?) along these lines before the end of 1998.

Foreword from the Group's Industrial Ecology Report

The recent diffusion of the term "industrial ecology" stems from its use by physicist Robert Frosch in a paper on environmentally favorable strategies for manufacturing co-authored with Nicholas Gallopolous published in September 1989 in Scientific American. Frosch embraced the concept of "industrial metabolism" which Robert Ayres has developed to organize thinking about the massive, systematic transformations of materials in modern economies. Industrial metabolism as well as dematerialization (the diminishing amount of material required for a good or service) had been explored at an August 1988 workshop of the National Academy of Engineering chaired by Frosch (Ausubel and Sladovich, 1988). Frosch sought a term that conveyed not only the sense of transformation but also the networks of actors doing the producing and consuming - or disposal - of materials and associated energy.

The new term resonated. The National Academy of Sciences, in association with the AT&T Corporation, convened a "Colloquium on Industrial Ecology" chaired by Kumar Patel in May of 1991 to consider the subject more fully. The Colloquium addressed optimization of the total materials cycle, from virgin to finished material, including components, products, waste products, and ultimate disposal (PNAS 89(3), 793-884, 1992).

During the past few years, a growing number of researchers as well as practicing engineers and managers have been attracted to "industrial ecology." The term appears to offer a framework within which to improve knowledge and decisions about materials use, waste reduction, and pollution prevention. Some dozen workshops, many organized by NAE, have explicitly addressed aspects of industrial ecology. These include applicability in selected manufacturing sectors, applicability in services industries, environmentally symbiotic co-location of industries, comparative experiences in different nations, relationship to global environmental problems, and performance measures. Braden Allenby and Thomas Graedel codified much of the early knowledge in a 1995 textbook. Several universities and other research institutions now have courses or programs in industrial ecology. The U.S. government's National Environmental Technology Strategy endorsed the concept. A Journal of Industrial Ecology has been established as well as a fellowship program. Swiss journalist Suren Erkman (serkman@mail.vtx.ch) has built a database of relevant publications containing over one thousand items. Popular articles have appeared in newspapers and magazines, and even a sociological review (O'Rourke et al, 1996) .

Of course, no subject is wholly new, and antecedents have been traced. Importantly, individuals with similar and related interests in numerous countries have joined the discussion.

In this period of maturation, a group of us who have participated in the growth of industrial ecology (calling ourselves the Vishnu Group, for the Hindu deity embodying preservation) agreed in December of 1995 that it could be useful to outline research directions for the field. Notwithstanding the existence of much research planning in fields of environmental science and technology, we found little language that addressed the needs we see. The interest of the US Department of Energy, and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in particular, to learn more about industrial ecology provided the occasion and generated the needed financial support. The Program for the Human Environment at The Rockefeller University agreed to serve as the hub for the activity. We met twice as a group and interacted extensively in smaller meetings and through telecommunications. Iddo Wernick took the lead in drafting the report.

We speak about issues and problems rather than disciplines. We believe people with diverse backgrounds, skills, and specialized knowledge from physical and life sciences, engineering, and social sciences as well as industrial practice will all contribute to the advancement of industrial ecology. Many of the problems will benefit from analysis by teams combining fields of expertise. Universities, government laboratories, and both for-profit and not-for-profit private sector research groups may all find areas appropriate for their labors.

We are well aware that researchers are conducting a considerable amount of high-quality, relevant work in Austria, Canada, Denmark, Netherlands, Japan, Germany, Italy, Switzerland and other countries. Although some of this is represented in the bibliography, we have not had the time or means to carry out a systematic global survey. We have tried to identify directions that soundly reflect the mix of industries and environmental issues that characterize the United States. We have yet to estimate the costs in human effort or dollars of the research envisioned. An obvious next step is to make such an assessment and to search for bargains.

References:

1 See pp. 129-135 in Thomas H. Lee, Advanced Fossil Fuel Systems and Beyond, pp. 114-136 in Jesse H. Ausubel and Hedy E. Sladovich, eds., Technology and Environment, National Academy Press, Washington DC, 1989.

2. W. Dale Compton and Joseph A. Heim, eds., Manufacturing Systems: Foundations of World-Class Practice, National Academy Press, Washington DC, 1992.

3. Robert A. Frosch, Toward the End of Waste: Reflections on a New Ecology of Industry, Daedalus 125(3):199-212, 1996.

4. Peter J. Ince, Recycling of Wood and Paper Products in the United States, U.S. Dept. of Agriculture Forest Service, paper delivered at United Nations Economic Commission for Europe Timber Committee Team of Specialists on New Products, Recycling, Markets, and Applications for Forest Products, June 1994. Copies available from USDA Forest Service Forest Products Laboratory, Madison Wisconsin, 53705, USA. 5. (Webmaster note: We could not find anything on the Web with the "CyberEcoPark" tag, but you may wish to ahve a look at "Eco-Industrial Parks" for what they have to say on this from one US perspecitve, and Web pages such as that for Ecopark Moerdijk

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