D1. Knowledge and understanding
Understand the main theoretical models and empirical evidence describing the relationship between the economy and the environment, the methods used to value the environment and natural resources, and the main environmental policies. Understand the foundations and the main tools for economic or multicriteria evaluation of energy transition projects in the industry.
D2. Applying knowledge and understanding.
The knowledge acquired should enable students to understand and interpret the complexity of the links between the economic system, the ecosystem and the social context. The acquired knowledge also allows to perform an evaluation of a project, based on single or multiple criteria.
D3. Making judgements.
The ability to make judgements is developed through the exam preparation, which calls for the personal revision and assimilation of the material presented in the course.
D4. Communication
The communication capability includes the ability to describe with appropriate language the topics discussed in the course, and one of the assigned scientific papers. The student should also be able to describe the goals and impacts of the environmental policies and to communicate the development of the evaluation process, the methods and the results achieved in a technical-economic feasibility study.
D5. Learning skills
Learning skills are stimulated by deepening the knowledge acquired during the course and by preparing and presenting a paper assigned by the lecturers. Further, learning skills are stimulated by the analysis of a problem of evaluation and choice of project alternatives, and the identification of the most appropriate methods and the information sources useful for the economic or multi-criteria evaluation of energy transition projects in the industry.

None

The course is divided into two modules - ENVIRONMENTAL ECONOMICS, and ECONOMIC EVALUATION OF INDUSTRIAL PROJECTS - and is characterized by the following contents.
Environmental Economics:
1. Introduction: economics, natural resources and the environment;
2. Markets and public goods;
3. Environmental policies.
Economic Evaluation of Industrial Projects:
Objectives and structure of feasibility studies; economic evaluation of energy transition projects in the context of business organisations; revenue and cost components of projects; financial parameters of evaluation; methods of economic evaluation; implementation examples of methods.
Cost-effectiveness analysis.
Foundations and general structure of multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA); MCDA methods; methods for the assessment of the parameters needed in MCDA.

The lecturer provides the course slides and other material (papers, readings etc.) to support students’ learning.
Recommended textbook:
- Hanley, N., Shogren, J., White, B. (2019) Introduction to environmental economics, Oxford University Press
Tietenberg, T., Lewis, L. (2024). Environmental and natural resource economics, Routledge
- Eschenbach T. (2010) Engineering economy, 3rd ed., Oxford University Press

The course is divided into two modules - ENVIRONMENTAL ECONOMICS, and ECONOMIC EVALUATION OF INDUSTRIAL PROJECTS - and is characterized by the following contents.
Environmental Economics
0. Introduction: the economy, natural resources and the environment. 1. Markets and public goods 1.1 Externalities and public goods 1.2 How markets work and why they fail 2. Environmental policies 2.1 Environmental standards, command and control instruments 2.2 Environmental taxes 2.3 Environmental subsidies and incentives 2.4 Negotiable environmental permits 2.5 The role of innovation.
Economic Evaluation of Industrial Projects
Introductory elements on evaluation and decisions in the industry: project, decision process and the role of the feasibility study.
Economic evaluation of projects: financial methods for project evaluation, with particular reference to projects for the energy transition. Non discounting methods: break-even and payback period. Discounting methods: net present value, profitability index, equivalent annual value, internal rate of return. Analysis of uncertainty.
Cost-effectiveness analysis in industrial projects.
Multi-criteria decision analysis and their use in industry and projects for energy transition. Non-compensatory methods and analysis of dominance. Compensatory methods based on value functions and aggregation. Methods based on the concept of ideal. Procedures for the assessment of weights in the aggregation procedure.

Lectures on methodological aspects, and discussion of case studies, with possible elaboration and presentation of team work on case-studies, selected by students, or scientific papers.

The students are warmly invited to attend the lectures in order to benefit from the application of methods to the case studies.
The course slides and additional material can be downloaded from the Moodle site (moodle2.units.it); students must log in with their student access code in order to download the material and receive the lecturer's communications.

The exam is a written test with open-ended questions, multiple choice questions and exercises on methodological aspects or simple applications of methods. Students attending in-person lectures may take written in-term test as an alternative to the final exam.

This course explores topics closely related to one or more of the goals of the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development: 12; 11; 9; 7; 13