This chapter discusses the theory behind resource use measurements as a way to support the analysis of the economic and financial feasibility of renewable energy projects (REP). It begins by providing an overview of the literature for analyzing economic and financial feasibility in the renewable energy sector and goes on to reveal the gap in the literature that this thesis addresses. 2.1 Challenges for Business Valuation of REPs There has been progress on many fronts to make a financial feasibility assessment for renewable energy projects affordable and possible, including (but not limited to) production costs (e.g. McAloon, F. Taylor , Yee, Ibsen and Wooley, 2000); transportation costs (Batidzirai, 2005; Overend, 1982; Searcy et al., 2007); capital costs (Bridgwater & Double, 1991; Gallagher, Schamel, Shapouri, & Brubaker, 2006); resource availability (Graf & Koehler, 2002); environmental performance (Von Blottnitz & Curran, 2007; Taheripour, Hertel, Tyner, Beckman, & Birur, 2008; Pimentel & Patzek, 2007); regional socio-economic development (Swenson & Eathington, 2006) and organizational costs (Altman & Johnson, 2008). Regarding business development, many studies have focused on selecting optimal energy conversion paths and identifying successful strategies for related business design. (e.g. Hamelinck & Faaij, 2006; Junginger et al., 2008). In this sense, whole system approaches have also been attempted to evaluate the overall production performance of particular systems (Bridgwater & Double, 1991; Kerstetter, 2001). No one, however, has successfully presented a simple, yet robust, framework for inferring and comparing economic and financial aspects of renewable energy projects that impact business vi...... middle of paper ......med long the entire production scale (one for each phase). However, this effect has its advantages as this analysis could make efficiency bottlenecks more obvious and easily identifiable. It may also be desirable, as some authors suggest, that the exploration and cross-comparison of resource use within an industrial sector only makes sense when a “holistic view of the production chain” is maintained (Stadtler, 2008, p. 38). . Perhaps such a vision will not only increase our overall understanding of the energy system, but also facilitate its mathematical modeling. Although directly calculating the overall energy breakthrough presented by the energy system is our ultimate goal, its direct aggregate estimate would naturally reduce our ability to compare and understand REPs and increase the likelihood of incurring mathematical errors during the modeling process..