Definition
Techno-economic analysis, or TEA, is a method for evaluating the economic performance of a technology. A TEA assesses the overall value of a technology, allowing analysts to objectively weigh benefits against costs., or TEA, is a method for evaluating the economic performance of a technology. A TEA assesses the overall value of a technology, allowing analysts to objectively weigh benefits against costs.
Many TEA approaches focus on cost benchmarking. In a cost benchmarking approach, the costs of a new technology are compared head-to-head against those of the existing commercial technology that it would compete with in the marketplace. This is done to assess competitiveness.For successful commercialization, a new technology must be cost-competitive. The goal is cost parity (at least!) when comparing to a commercial benchmark, after accounting for technical performance benefits. In the cost benchmarking approach, we evaluate the commercial viability of the new technology by comparing its manufacturing costs to those of a corresponding commercial benchmark. For all cost estimations, we assume that the new technology has been deployed at a full industrial scale– even if its current technology readiness level, or TRL, is low.