Interview with Gilbert Anderer, Marketing Consultant and Stefan Krawielitzki Head of R&D at AVA BIOCHEM, leaders of the Techno-Economic analysis and Market Assessment tasks for PERFORM.
Why is it important to carry out a techno economic analysis and a market assessment?
A Techno-economic assessment (TEA) is a methodology framework to analyze the technical and economic performance of a process, product or service. Usually, this is done if you are close to market and you know the most important and decisive parameters to get valid results. This is important to determine the impact of certain parameters of a product and/or service. If done for several goods and services, the TEA provides a framework for comparative analysis, showing which parameters perform better or worse with respect to a certain goal. This approach basically shows how things developed in the past will perform in the future.
In the PERFORM project, we are adding an additional step: we are doing a preliminary TEA very early in the project, when things are still under development. This generates some challenges with respect to the validity and availability of the data. Even the functional unit (usually a production plant) is not yet clear. We are taking these risks, because we intend to influence the product and process development showing which parameters influence costs decisively, giving hints to improve the development in an early stage when changes are not yet too expensive and time-consuming. If things work out as expected, we can use the TEA as a kind of steering tool for the development of the PERFORM products and services.
We are also combining TEA with life cycle analysis (LCA) to provide a more comprehensive evaluation of the technologies. These techniques share a symbiotic relationship in that they enhance findings from each discipline. TEA can quantify the economic costs associated with environmental impacts, and LCA determines the environmental effects related to TEA assumptions.
As a further addition, a Market Assessment is being developed in parallel to assess the market conditions and trends of the PERFORM project results, with the aim of preparing the outcomes for its successful future commercialization. Besides, the market assessment may influence in the development of the final products, making the appropriate recommendations to adapt them to the current demands of the key stakeholders.