Techno-economic analysis in the green mobility sector: A guideline for method selection

The Techno-Economic Analysis (TEA) is extensively carried out in the engineering world, and many methodologies exist for conducting it. For selecting a proper TEA methodology, an adequate knowledge of existing methodologies, including the most recent and innovative ones, can represent a useful tool for both scholars and practitioners. To facilitate this learning process, this research study aims to provide a schematic and effective guide for selecting the proper TEA methodology, highlighting their key features in a concise overview. This is the first literature review that collect and summarize different existing TEA methodologies for a specific sector, offering a thorough guide for their application. In this study, the considered area of application is represented by the entire mobility sector. In particular, it is intended to provide to the reader a list of articles that include reproducible methodologies. Therefore, only articles that clearly and explicitly describe the mathematical algorithm or the functionality of software are selected. The analysis and the comparison of the various research papers showed that TEA is mainly used for feasibility studies, optimization, best-case scenario selection and benefit analysis. TEA is also commonly carried out together with a sensitivity analysis. In addition, it can be detected that, in the last 10 years, TEA has been mostly applied to electrified vehicles. This result demonstrates a desire to promote renewable solutions through evidence-based analysis. Other mobility sub-sectors promoting renewable solutions are the biofuel production and the infrastructures (hydrogen refueling stations and BEVs charging stations) for the mobility support. Results of the work also highlight how TEA applied to biofuel production mostly includes the minimization of environmental impacts.