EcoWater report - Technology assessment and scenario analysis

Deliverable 4.4 presents results of the work undertaken during the third phase of the Case Study Development progress and the third year of the EcoWater Project, for the four industrial Case Studies: Case Study 5: Textile Industries in Biella Region in Italy; Case Study 6: Cogeneration of thermal energy and electricity using water from the Rhine Channel in the Netherlands;? Case Study 7: Dairy industry in Denmark;? Case Study 8: Automotive Industry in Sweden. The Baseline Eco efficiency Assessment was presented in Deliverable 4.2 based on the Value Chain Mapping of the four Case Studies, presented in Deliverable 4.1.- Technologies for upgrading the value chains were presented in Deliverable 4.3. The task of calculating the environmental and economic performance indicators with the identified technologies proved to be more difficult and time consuming than expected for all four Case Studies and in particular for Case Study 6. This was due to the complexity of the processes in the production chain and the large amount of data required in order to build a representative model of each studied system. Thus, minor or major changes were made to the system boundaries of some of the systems, without, however, affecting their meso-level characteristics. The assessment of innovative technologies and scenarios showed that: The water use stages were the dominant contributors to both the total value added and the environmental impacts of the industrial water value chains studied; The technologies which result in an increased eco-efficiency in the water value chain are sector specific; Combinations of technologies (scenarios) provide more eco-efficient solutions than single technologies; Eco-innovative solutions were identified- with significant improvements in environmental performance and smaller improvements in economic performance; Economic performance was primarily improved for the industries - while suppliers of water and energy experienced losses; As a more general observation from the dialogue with the industries during the analysis we learned that industries understand “business cases and rate of return of investment”. However, there is need to be educated on the use of eco-efficiency and total value added in decision making. This report is only available in Swedish.