Ordinal benefits vs economic benefits as a reference guide for policy decision making. The case of hydrogen technologies

The paper presents an Investment Evaluation Method in Energetic–Economic–Environmental field which is particularly indicated for Hydrogen Technologies because it enables us to account not only for the traditional economic return and the possible negative externalities (damages), but also for: i) the induced economic benefits at a social level; ii) those positive (and negative) externalities usually considered as being estimable in economic terms as “proxies”; iii) and, finally, Ordinal Benefits. That is those Benefits which are never ever reducible to a simple monetary value, nonetheless they can always be object of a possible estimation, still in economic terms, by means of values understood as a “cipher”.