Total Cost Assessment (TCA)

Typically, the use of financial analysis overlooks the full financial implications of environmentally-based options because associated costs and savings are misallocated, uncertain, hard to quantify, or occur more than three to five years after the initial investment.

Unlike Full Cost Assessment (FCA), TCA only considers direct and indirect costs to the firm and does not attempt to estimate external costs (i.e., those borne by society) resulting from a firm's activities.