Techno-economic assessment or techno-economic analysis (abbreviated TEA) is a method of analyzing the economic performance of an industrial process, product, or service. The methodology originates from earlier work on combining technical, economic and risk assessments for chemical production processes.[1] It typically uses software modeling to estimate capital cost, operating cost, and revenue based on technical and financial input parameters.[2] One desired outcome is to summarize results in a concise and visually coherent form, using visualization tools such as tornado diagrams and sensitivity analysis graphs.
At present, TEA is most commonly used to analyze technologies in the chemical, bioprocess, petroleum, energy, and similar industries. This article focuses on these areas of application.