An Industrial Ecology Perspective On Sustainable Business Models: The Case Of Sustainable District Heating

The district heating (DH) market is undergoing a change with the emergence of Sustainable District Heating (SDH), based on renewable locale resources, as a building block for a local ecological transition. However, research on DH tends to focus on technological solutions to support this transition. Business models, especially innovative and sustainable business models (SBM) are overlooked although management scholars have stressed they played a key role in ecological transitions. SDH have a strong local anchorage with the integration of multiple stakeholders to the BM since resources at stake may be varied and require strong coordination and the setting of governance mechanisms to build durable networks. The complexity of such networks is well described on the industrial ecology literature. To what extent the industrial ecology framework may help to design another perspective on SBM for DH at a local scale? To answer this question we analyze two French DH case studies that were pioneers in the integration of renewable heat to their energy mix. We stress how the introduction of a new value proposition, based on sustainable concerns, can change the set of resources and competences and organization (both internal and external), which according to Demil and Lecocq (2010) represent the three pillars in dynamic interaction of a BM. We also study this change through the industrial ecology framework (Brullot, 2009), especially focusing on the design of a shared imaginary and governance as two aspects ensuring the durability of the SBM.