Subsidised water symbiosis of eco-industrial parks: A multi-stage game theory approach

Designing water symbiosis networks in an industrial site is aimed to solve the water quality and security problem by minimising freshwater consumption or pollutant discharge. However, implementing the symbiosis requires an expensive capital cost on the site and may need cost compensation by the authority to facilitate the operation. This work aims to identify the distribution of stable and fair profits to the plants from the government to each stakeholder with the Cooperative Game approach. This study considers the grand coalition of finite players (industrial plants/stakeholders) with authority to facilitate water recycling in an eco-industrial park. The first stage includes the determination of the park authority's objectives (i.e., to minimise cost, resource usage, or pollutants discharge) if the stakeholders cooperate. In the next stage, the park authority can then compensate the cost by providing incentives or subsidies for the stakeholders that participate in the symbiosis. The incentives can be a rewarding scheme for the recycling effort s, while the subsidies are the money required to build the facilities. The stakeholders are then allowed to decide the recycling amount that maximises their economic interests. A wastewater tax can be imposed by the authority to the stakeholders to stimulate them to take part in the symbiosis while generating the money source for subsidisation. Proper game analysis is provided to analyze the Nash Equilibrium solutions of the tax rate. A hypothetical case study is used to demonstrate how fair subsidisation can be identified and the implementation of taxation policy. The proposed framework demonstrates the potential benefits and guidelines for each industrial plant, as well as the government, to derive a feasible cooperative policy to achieve the goal of environmental emissions reduction and can be applied to analyze similar symbiosis. (c) 2021 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Automated summary

The study focuses on implementing water recycling in an eco-industrial park to minimize costs, resource usage, or pollutant discharge. By using cooperative game approach, the government can provide incentives or subsidies to encourage plant participation in symbiosis.