CORALIS: A Success Story for Industrial Symbiosis
Read all A.SPIRE Success Stories here.
Tomorrow’s Sustainability Is Built on Today’s Know-How
Context
Resource depletion and environmental pollution are challenges the modern world is facing. Addressing the high energy consumption levels, the greenhouse gas emissions (GHG), and climate change requires a shift in the way we produce and consume energy. To support that shift, CORALIS proposed industrial symbiosis as a pathway towards a sustainable future.
Industrial symbiosis, identified by the Processes4Planet 2050 Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda as one of the key cross-sector enablers to achieve climate neutrality, circularity and competitiveness, transforms by-products of one industry into valuable resources of another.
CORALIS: A SPIRE Project
Funded by Horizon 2020 under a SPIRE (the predecessor of Processes4Planet) call, CORALIS (full title ‘Creation Of new value chain Relations through novel Approaches facilitating Long-term Industrial Symbiosis’) started on 1 October 2020 and ended on 31 March 2025. The project gathered an ample consortium of 32 partners, coordinated by the A.SPIRE member, CIRCE. Under the slogan ‘Paving the Way for Industrial Symbiosis,’ CORALIS aimed at creating ‘pathways for the decarbonisation of resource and energy intensive sector value chains linked through the implementation of viable industrial symbiosis approaches’ (source). Industrial symbiosis (IS) promotes collaboration between industries, cities, and other stakeholders to reuse waste, share resources, and close material loops.
CORALIS was an Innovation action (IA).
Approach: Lighthouses and Followers
The goal of CORALIS was to create first-hand experience and know-how on the deployment of industrial symbiosis by fostering innovative cross-sector collaboration and partnerships. To this end, the project addressed three crucial factors: technological, managerial and economic.
The approach was demonstrated in three initial industrial parks in Italy (Brescia demo case), Sweden (Frövi demonstrator) and Spain (the Escombreras Valley Hub)–the lighthouses. The sectors addressed by the three lighthouses are Chemical, Minerals and Water (Spain), Steel, Cast Iron and Aluminium (Italy) and Farming Energy (Sweden). The lighthouses had a clear structure, involving a coordinator and a facilitator, and a varying number of additional organisations.
Three additional industrial parks (in Spain, Austria and Turkey), called the followers, will replicate the approach after the project ends.
The Success Story: Next Steps
The project ended in 2025, and its final conference took place on 19 March 2025, in Brussels. The event walked the audience through the project’s achievements in the past four years, highlighting its relevance in the European industrial symbiosis landscape. The technical solutions and lessons learnt from the project were showcased. The project not only built the hubs, but through the demonstrators, it created solutions, measurement systems and business cases for industrial symbiosis.
One notable success of CORALIS was building the network and collaboration necessary for industrial symbiosis, leading to a better understanding of the social and legal framework required for the promising technology to develop.
The representative of the follower cases (from Linz, Austria) mentioned that the project team has already developed individual roadmaps for IS implementation in the follower regions. This translates into strategies, the identification of the needed infrastructure and investments, and a clear list of priorities. Furthermore, the followers have already conducted actions to engage the relevant stakeholders.
During the final conference, the project coordinator, from CIRCE, talked about the evaluation framework developed by the project, the techno-economic evaluation of the lighthouses and the performance monitoring. Additionally, he stressed that CORALIS developed a series of knowledge webinars, tools, examples, references and scientific papers publicly available for whoever is interested in industrial symbiosis. These resources can be accessed through the project’s website.
The conference is available online.
A.SPIRE considers the CORALIS project a success story and an initiative relevant to all sectors the association represents. The initiative was an important, well-connected part of the A.SPIRE/P4Planet network, as mirrored by its large number of related projects, funded under SPIRE/P4Planet calls, or involving the association as a consortium member (the list is available on the project’s website).
By developing the necessary knowledge and making it publicly available, CORALIS is ‘paving the way for industrial symbiosis’, contributing to a more circular, sustainable future.
Download the leaflet for more information about this success story.
Visit the CORALIS project’s website.
For more information about A.SPIRE, the Processes4Planet Partnership, and the Success Stories, contact the team.
