As new technologies continue to emerge in renewable fuels, renewable chemicals, and other renewable energy, it is imperative that investors and lenders, and the project participants themselves, engage experienced professional to help analyze the technical and economic aspects of these new projects.
Techno-economic assessments, sometimes called techno economic analysis, or TEAs, are one tool used to aid decision makers on the worth of investing time and money on development, deployment and/or acquisition of a specific technology. As the name implies, a TEA assesses the maturity of the studied technology, as well as its potential future economic viability. As with most analysis, a critical first step is the definition and agreement on the scope and objectives of the assessment. The scope of the TEA will be dependent on the reason the TEA is being conducted. If the TEA is being conducted on an early stage R&D technology, the assessment will consider economic profitability and market analysis, in a less exhaustive manner and delve into more of the data from the R&D efforts, in an attempt to provide guidance on the required future directions and targets for the on-going R&D. If the TEA is being conducted on a successfully demonstrated technology, for the purposes of a potential acquisition, the analysis will review the technology development also, but will expend more effort attempting to understand the key capital and operating costs, product markets and the project pipeline.
The technology assessment component of the TEA will typically include a quantitative assessment of the technology maturity, via assignment of a technology readiness level or TRL. In addition, the assessment will typically review the technology development history, technology strengths, weaknesses and associated risks and will consider the potential development path(s) to get to successful commercial deployment of the technology.
The best renewable energy and biochemical consulting firms have experts in a wide variety of bioeconomy specialties, including all types of alternative energy and energy consultants. These firms should also have experts in renewable fuels like ethanol fuel and diesel biodiesel, synthetic diesel, renewable chemicals, renewable electricity, biomass energy, feedstocks, biomass technologies, bioproducts, and all areas of sustainability, synthetic biology, emerging technologies, and waste management, as well as even more specialized things like algae biofuel, agitation systems, agricultural waste, bio oils, bio jet fuel, carbon accreditation, carbon capture, carbon credits, climate change analysis, emerging technologies, environmental permitting, enzyme technologies, feedstock due diligence, financial due diligence, and glycerin related matters. They should have teams of experts for all types of clean energy, green energy, renewable energy finance, and renewables and should be able to provide expertise for projects and be available to serve as expert witnesses in matters within the bioeconomy.
At Lee Enterprises Consulting, we have highly qualified experts available to assist you with techno economic assessments in matters involving renewable fuels, renewable chemicals, feedstocks, bio technologies, bioproducts, and virtually all areas of sustainability, synthetic biology, emerging technologies, and waste management. See here for a list of our experts and our services and areas of specialty. Feel free call or email us for more information.