Introduction

The failure of many pollution‐prevention programs can be traced to the inability of the engineers and scientists to convince business leadership to change manufacturing processes unfavorable to the environment. Often, this reluctance to change is not because the recommended process improvements were technically unsound, but because the engineering team failed to speak the language of business, that is dollars and cents. The role of economics in pollution prevention is very important, even as important as the ability to identify technologies changes to the process, new and emerging technologies, process and/or product modification, Zero Discharge technologies, technologies for biobased engineered chemicals, products, renewable energy sources, and its associated costs.

Market acceptance of new technologies, products, processes, and services depend upon the complex interplay of cost, physical properties, environmental performance, public policy, cultural prejudices, and other factors. Accurate forecasting is a difficult and time‐consuming activities best left to the experts. However, cost estimating is a valuable skill that allows an engineer to obtain “ballpark” approximation of project costs. The goal is to obtain an estimate that is within ±30% of the actual cost if the enterprise were pursued. Such estimates are relatively easy to develop. Engineers use a relatively small set of financial tools to assess alternative capital investments and to justify their selections to upper management. Most often, the engineer’s purpose is to show how a recommended investment will improve the company’s profitability. Spending on capital improvements is largely voluntary. Adding an assembly line or changing from one type of gasket material to another can be postponed, or the proposal, or rejected outright. This is not the case with pollution control devices, which are necessary for compliance with state and federal pollution standards and generally must be installed by or before a mandated deadline. Consequently, a decision to install device X may not originate with the engineer. Instead, the need for pollution control equipment might be identified by a company’s environmental manager who then passes the decision to acquire device X down to the engineer. This chapter gives some cost‐estimating methods that can be used to assess the costs of implementing pollution prevention technologies; these methods are useful, as well, in cost comparisons, and in considerations of cost‐effectiveness, best available technologies and emerging technologies. Also provided is some information about the cost of renewable resources and the cost of manufacturing biobased products from such feedstocks. We begin, however, with a few remarks about the economic matrix in which profitable pollution control technology and best control technology are implemented.