Qualla: Kalundborg Eco-industrial Park

Kalundborg Eco-industrial Park: Introduction

Sat, 05 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Bococo, CC BY-SA 3.0. Nobody designed this. That is the part that keeps getting left out of the case studies. The web of pipes and conveyors linking a refinery, a power station, an insulin plant and a plasterboard factory on the western shore of Zealand was not drawn up by a ministry or a master planner. It accumulated, one bilateral deal at a time, because a purchasing manager somewhere worked out that another company's waste was cheaper than a virgin input. Kalundborg is the first full realization of what is now called industrial symbiosis, and it happened by accident.

Image: Bococo | CC BY-SA 3.0

Kalundborg Eco-industrial Park: It Started With Water

Sat, 05 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit No machine-readable author provided. Lcl assumed (based on copyright claims)., Public domain. The first link was not glamorous. In 1961 a pipeline was laid from Lake Tissø to a new oil refinery, because Kalundborg does not have much fresh water and a refinery needs a great deal of it. Scarcity, not idealism, set the pattern. In 1972 Gyproc, a plasterboard manufacturer, ra...

Image: No machine-readable author provided. Lcl assumed (based on copyright claims). | Public domain

Kalundborg Eco-industrial Park: What Flows Where

Sat, 05 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Mr3641 (talk), Public domain. More than thirty exchanges run between the actors in Kalundborg today. The Asnæs power station sits at the centre of the web, sending steam residuals to the refinery — enough to meet about 40% of its steam requirement — and on to pharmaceutical production and a fish farm. The ref...

Image: Mr3641 (talk) | Public domain

Kalundborg Eco-industrial Park: The Cast

Sat, 05 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit News Oresund, CC BY 2.0. Nine private and public enterprises make up the park, several of them among the largest firms in Denmark. Novo Nordisk, the world's biggest producer of insulin, anchors the pharmaceutical end. Novozymes — renamed Novonesis in 2024 — is the world's largest enzyme producer. Ørsted ...

Image: News Oresund | CC BY 2.0

Kalundborg Eco-industrial Park: Counting What Was Not Used

Sat, 05 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Mr3641 (talk), Public domain. The savings are real but slippery, because measuring an avoided input is harder than measuring a sale. Figures from around 2004 put the annual water savings at 2.9 million cubic metres of ground water and a million cubic metres of surface water. Gypsum savings run to roughly 170,...

Image: Mr3641 (talk) | Public domain

Kalundborg Eco-industrial Park: The Lesson Nobody Wanted

Sat, 05 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Nagilmer, CC BY-SA 3.0. Kalundborg's success set off a wave of imitation. Governments in developed countries began writing incentives for corporate materials exchange, and in 1996 the U.S. President's Council on Sustainable Development proposed fifteen eco-industrial parks, defining five characteristics...

Image: Nagilmer | CC BY-SA 3.0