The establishment of the cost and
subsequent final price of the Environmental Impact Study is usually done
internally depending on the days and resources involved in the preparation of
the planning, fieldwork, number of professional specialties involved and
subsequent cabinet work.
Thus, even if the project or plan
has a great magnitude or is expected from it, we understand that the price of
the Environmental Impact Study must be independent of it and must be subject
only to objective factors intrinsic to the nature of the project or plan and of
the environment that will support it instead of a percentage of the investment
or the amortization plan or expected benefits. The factors that, in our
opinion, define the final cost of an Environmental Impact Study are the
following:
1. The first element that decides
the price of a project or plan submitted to Environmental Impact
Assessment is
obviously the type of project or plan. Thus, the type of project will determine
the factors of the environment to be studied with greater rigor, since
economic-technical efforts must be focused on evaluating the factors of the
environment that can really be affected.
2. Regardless of the distance of
the project to the headquarters of the environmental consulting team that
prepares the Environmental Impact Study, the project situation, understood as
the set of values of the environment present in the area, also defines the cost
of the Environmental Study, being equal or more determinant than the typology
of the project.
3. By period of study, we are not
referring to the time of year, but to the period of time that will be necessary
to properly evaluate the factor to be studied, such as the need to conduct
Annual Animal Studies in projects that involve a greater impact on the same, as
wind farms that in the majority of the occasions require the elaboration of a
study in different seasons of the year.
4. The extension of the project
also defines the price of an Environmental Impact Study, since the field
analysis of a greater extension of territory translates into a greater number
of field hours; For example, it is not the same to carry out the environmental
impact study of a small farm of a few square meters than a solar plant of
several hundred hectares.
5. Regarding the quality of the
Environmental Impact Study that we offer, although it would be a determining factor
to hire an environmental consultant or another, we can say that, unfortunately
(or luckily for some), the cost of the Impact Study Environmental is sometimes
not proportional to the quality. Since experience tells us that we can find
environmental consultants in the market that offer Environmental Impact Studies
at a good price and high quality and, on the contrary, we find
"professionals" that due to lack of knowledge or due to malpractice,
they offer low-quality Environmental Impact.
6. The experience of the Environmental Consultant that prepares the Environmental Impact
Study and the number of own professional specialties involved, are also
determining factors in the price, since this experience and internationalization
of the specialization translate into speed of execution and optimization of
resources and, to its time, in a cost reduction.
7. Last, and not least, is the
degree of definition of the project or plan that is intended to be evaluated;
Thus, the cost of an Environmental Impact Study of a project in the definition
or draft phase can increase considerably, since the research and development
work that the environmental consultant must carry out in order to correctly
evaluate the project will involve a greater effort and, therefore, a higher
cost. The inherent risk of the dreaded project modifications is included here.
