Vestland Fylke avd Næring, plan og innovasjon

Location: Bergen (possibly Vestland)

Requirements: Need proficiency Norwegian 

About the institution:

Achieving the UN's sustainability goals will require a sharp focus on all aspects related to the extraction and utilization of natural resources. Once extracted, the resources must be handled in such a way that it allows maximum transformation between processes and further contributes to the lowest possible carbon emissions. Waste in one place must always be reckoned as potential resources for others. Energy must be understood as an asset possible to utilize more fully through related industrial symbiotic processes. All this are aspects of the ambition we often name as a “circular economy” – understood as a model of production and consumption, which involves sharing, leasing, reusing, repairing, refurbishing and recycling existing materials and products for as long as possible.

The road to a fully circular economy with zero carbon emission is long and full of potential bumps.

• How can we approach a holistic Life Cycle Assessment (LCSA) which, in addition to environmental LCA, can include life cycle cost (LCC) and social life cycle assessment (S-LCA). S-LCA is a technique for evaluating positive and negative social effects of a product or organization along its life cycle.
• How do we understand social risk and improvement of social conditions linked to conversion to the circular economy, and how justice, diversity and inclusion are considered.

Research has shown that at least four conditions are important in order to achieve a real green circular transition:

• Firstly, thermodynamic principles must be taken seriously. Material quality declines during the lifetime of most products, and input factors, such as energy and fuel, are therefore required to rebuild, repair, transport and recycle materials.
• Secondly, the ever-increasing demand for material and resources will exceed the efficiency gain. Growth in itself will be the main driver of an increase in greenhouse gas emissions and other environmental emissions. The contribution from the circular economy will therefore be small when the total use of materials and resources increases.
• We must develop new legal or financial incentives to make the circular economy profitable.
• How the circular economy affects justice, diversity and equality is not fully explored, but we will develop and use methods to map this.

We need to understand that the circular economy does not necessarily mean sustainability, and we need to address how the circular economy should be organized and measured with consideration to be sustainable.

These issues must be worked on within a regional context to achieve a customized toolbox for green transition and sustainable and circular development in Vestland. 

Green region Vestland is a joint initiative and project co-owned by the Vestland county council and Innovation Norway Vestland. It was established to enable various public and private sector initiatives to coordinate and stimulate regional industries in their efforts to decarbonize their value chains and businesses.  

Extensive research was carried out in 2021 and updated during autumn of 2023 to establish projects that would lead to decarbonization as well as describing and defining obstacles that prevent regional industry to go ahead with decarbonization. Based on this research a number of strategic green hubs have been defined throughout Vestland county. These hubs are defined by their potential to realize decarbonization and support a leading position in new and/or greener value chains. The research further showed a clear correlation between current wealth creation, emissions, and the need for transformation, decarbonization or new, greener value chains.  

Industrial symbiosis has been identified as the leading strategy for businesses in the hubs defined by Green region Vestland to reach their targets on emissions cuts, new green jobs and increased exports. The strategy implies a transformation from a linear approach to production to a circular approach where energy and other resources that are the byproduct/waste from one value chain is the utilized as a resource in another value chain.