The role of the Thermoeconomic Environment in the exergy based cost accounting of technological and biological systems

The paper introduces the Thermoeconomic Environment as a consistent ultimate boundary of the exergy cost accounting, where various exergy reservoir, of limited content, are immersed in the zero-exergy matrix, but they keep separated from it because of some confinement constraint. Starting from this very simple, but meaningful frame, the following issues are reviewed and commented, highlighting limitations and some possible new perspective: the exergy cost of mineral resources, the exergy cost of the products of biological systems, the exergy evaluation of capital and human work, the exergy evaluation of polluting emissions.