Cost-Benefit Analysis

This guide explains how the Low Emissions Analysis Platform (LEAP) performs integrated social cost-benefit analysis to compare energy system scenarios, focusing on social opportunity costs rather than financial viability or consumer prices.

• LEAP's cost-benefit analysis calculates costs across the energy system, including capital and operating maintenance for technologies in Demand and Transformation systems, as well as costs for extracting primary resources and importing fuels, alongside benefits from fuel exports. Users can optionally include environmental externalities by assigning costs to pollutant emissions and other direct social or environmental impacts.
• The analysis is based on social costs (opportunity costs to society) rather than final consumer prices or financial viability. It is designed to identify socially-acceptable policy scenarios, which can then be subjected to separate detailed financial analysis to determine financial acceptability.
• LEAP allows users to define a costing boundary within the Transformation module to limit which energy conversion and extraction costs are counted. This is useful when data for upstream technologies, such as coal mining or oil refining, is unavailable; in such cases, costs are applied to feedstock fuels delivered to plants rather than the original resources.

APA

Stockholm Environment Institute (n.d.). Cost-Benefit Analysis. https://leap.sei.org/Help24/Concepts/Social_Cost-Benefit_Analysis.htm

Chicago

Stockholm Environment Institute. Cost-Benefit Analysis. n.d. https://leap.sei.org/Help24/Concepts/Social_Cost-Benefit_Analysis.htm.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |author=Stockholm Environment Institute |title=Cost-Benefit Analysis |url=https://leap.sei.org/Help24/Concepts/Social_Cost-Benefit_Analysis.htm |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{stockholmenvironmentinstitutendcostbenefit, author = {{Stockholm Environment Institute}}, title = {{Cost-Benefit Analysis}}, institution = {Stockholm Environment Institute}, url = {https://leap.sei.org/Help24/Concepts/Social_Cost-Benefit_Analysis.htm}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }