The Trilateral Externality Approach takes its origin from a several year integration activity of various evaluation methodologies (Energetic, Exergetic, Emergetic, Economic, etc.) and aims at giving a rigorous synthesis of such an integration process in the context of Neo-Classical Economics through the fundamental category of externality, in its extensive and intensive meaning.
After having shown the different (but complementary) perspectives of elaborating a unifying concept of externality (bottom-up and top-down approaches), the paper presents a limited set of synthetic Indicators for possible strategies of investment (at a regional and national level). An example of application devoted to Hydrogen technologies will show how renewable (or “equipollent”) Sources are already widely “competitive” with respect to fossil fuel technologies, obviously if analyzed in the light of such a general evaluation approach, which involves a unique trilateral relationship between firm, citizen and state.
In this context it will be thus much easier to show why the so-called “incentives” (in their several different possible forms) are nothing but a “remuneration” of positive externalities that a firm produces in favor of the collectivity, whereas the state recuperates such “incentives” because of a consequential increase in economic activities induced by those primary externalities, in a non-zero sum global process.