Principles of petrochemical cluster’ sustainability assessment based on its members’ energy efficiency performance

Abstract

For the Russian economy, the most crucial prerequisite for its moving towards sustainable development would be strong improvement of performance of the domestic enterprises and production complexes. It is obvious that this issue should be addressed with due consideration of the special aspects relevant to social and economic growth of various Russian areas, along with creating a respective cluster-based infrastructure. Therefore, all arrangements aimed at performance efficiency improvement should be reconciled with the social and economic development strategies designed for a particular area, and should be well considered when working out strategic development plans for the regional industrial and territorial clusters, as well as particular enterprises and production plants. This paper includes an analysis of the dynamics pattern of the main indicators characterizing the energy use efficiency in regard to the largest enterprise forming the core of the petrochemical cluster in one of the Russian regions. The study furthermore shows the determined factors bringing the greatest impact on the production energy efficiency improvement. The authors also describe the prospects for production energy intensity reduction against the backdrop of the electric energy and power market liberalization, and explain how accommodation of the industrial clusters’ activities to the changes taking place in the macroeconomic environment for business entities may determine the need for addressing a whole range of fundamentally new issues of methodological, methodical and organizational nature, which are relevant to development of a cluster behaviour strategy in response to the competitive electric energy market.