| Summary: | Northern Scandinavia is an area, which is rich in natural resources and energy-intensive base industries covering several branches, e.g., Mining, Iron and Steel, Metal production, Pulp and Paper. They are often part of a community network where a change in one node affects the behavior and efficiency of its neighbors. Improvements in environmental load, energy efficiency etc. cannot simply be achieved by improving the individual units. A system approach is needed. Such methods (Process Integration) have been developed within the Nordic Countries for more than twenty years, e.g. within the Swedish national program that was launched 1989. They are been practically applied e.g. at SSAB in Luleå An excellence center for Process Integration in Steelmaking (PRISMA), with industrial partners from Sweden and Finland, has recently been founded at MEFOS in Luleå. The process integration methods have been developed to handle multi-objective problems. This is because the industry has to answer to a combined demand on energy consumption, emission limits for several substances, climate effects as well as costs. For regional evaluation an economic model has been developed which explicitly returns changing input and output prices due to changes in e.g., production technology, derived input demand or the introduction of market instruments. Especially on smaller regional markets, changes in input demand of fibrous raw material might significantly affect its price. This price effect must be considered whenever extensive changes in the production process are considered so that the project is not, ex post, rendered unprofitable. Another factor of great influence is local and national attitudes. These can influence both market value and political decisions. These effects can be evaluated in stakeholder studies. Co-evaluation with the technical parameters mentioned above is interesting, but an obstacle is the difference in result format. A method (CONJOINT) has been developed, by which these results can be converted into numerical ...
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