Executive summary:

Global policymakers are promoting industrial parks as a vital tool for advancing climate action. Most recently, China’s government issued guidance on ‘zero-carbon industrial park’ (ZCIP) development in 2025. Deliberate design and operational choices can build on the traditional industry park model – which uses industry co-location to promote cost-effective economic activity – to target enhanced emissions mitigation. This approach promises to quicken the pace of industrial decarbonisation.

This report adds to the evidence base on how to design and operate industrial parks to ensure maximum emissions mitigation, with particular reference to China and its ZCIP programme. Tenants of industrial parks currently generate more than a third of China’s greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.

The report provides new insights from the global context, and Europe in particular, where ‘eco-industrial parks’ (EIPs) are well-established. European policymakers are directing their comprehensive climate-responsive regulatory, market-based, and financial instruments towards supporting enhanced decarbonisation in industrial parks.

ZCIPs, EIPs and other similarly named and organised sites can enhance shared access to climate-friendly infrastructure, energy,  materials, labour, technologies, and other inputs, while lowering costs. ‘Industrial symbiosis’, which promotes exchange of otherwise wasted energy and materials, can avoid significant emissions. Industry co-location can aid knowledge transfer through multi-stakeholder cooperation. Co-location can also improve the enabling environment for industrial decarbonisation, fostering coordinated responses to challenges and improving regulator ability to deliver solutions.

Evidence of the significant emissions reduction already achieved in industrial parks is provided in the report. At the national level, for example, South Korea’s comprehensive national EIP programme helped reduce GHG emissions by 2.1 MtCO₂-e/yr – equivalent to 4% of national industrial emissions – in just over a decade.

Common barriers to, and necessary enablers for, optimal emissions mitigation in industrial parks are also identified. Credible long-term industrial decarbonisation plans and policies, alongside mechanisms for mobilising public and private investment, are key framework conditions. More tailored actions can support specific priorities, including enhanced research and development to assist technological breakthroughs, and coordinated public and private buying to create demand for low emissions goods.

Three European case studies particularly add to the knowledge base on how to design and operate industrial parks for maximum decarbonisation:

• Germany’s Industrial Park Höchst (IPH) is a privately owned and operated chemicals and pharmaceuticals hub. Its notable achievements include reducing tenants’ GHG emissions by about 1 MtCO2-e/yr through a coordinated coal phaseout, and a most recent year-on-year emissions reduction of 7%

• ·Chemelot is a major Netherlands chemicals hub. It operates through public–private partnership and aligns priorities with its surrounding region’s government and academic stakeholders. Chemelot has helped its tenants achieve a total emissions reduction of 45% by 2023, from a 1990 baseline

• Spain’s Basque Industrial Super Cluster (BISC) unites 16 separate clusters containing numerous emissions-intensive industries. BISC was only created in 2021 but has already helped achieve a 2% reduction in CO₂ emissions and a 3% reduction in GHG emissions among cluster members

The report identifies several common factors that contributed to successful outcomes in case study parks: robust national and regional climate policy frameworks, formal organisational structures, research sector collaboration, and dual strategies of maximising current climate solutions while supporting breakthrough technologies. The case studies also reveal common barriers to future progress: a lack of fit-for-purpose infrastructure and regulation, and coordination challenges among diverse stakeholders.

In addition, the report presents and contextualises existing knowledge on designing and operating industrial parks for enhanced decarbonisation. It provides comprehensive guidance to help governments, park operators, tenants, and other stakeholders to improve outcomes across scoping and site selection, feasibility assessment, planning and design, permitting and policy alignment, and implementation and operation.

Recommendations for China’s future ZCIP development (but with global industrial park relevance) are provided, with differentiated responsibilities identified for actors at the macro (regional, national and international institutions and governments), meso (park planners and operators, local authorities), and micro (park tenants, supply chain members, R&D, and other local stakeholders) level. These recommendations are:

• enhance regulatory certainty and support to industrial decarbonisation

• establish strong public-private cooperation on industrial park development

• reduce coordination challenges among stakeholders

• leverage regional collaboration to maximise co-location efficiencies

• accelerate deployment of technically mature, high impact decarbonisation levers

• lower regulatory and infrastructure barriers to breakthrough technologies

• improve information flows around park performance

• align financial mechanisms with decarbonisation goals

• promote demand for low-emissions industrial goods

N.B. report publication is forthcoming in 2026