But still, some (private) firm wins the design contract, and then some other (private) firm or (private) firms contract out the labor (or most of it) to do things like, environmental studies, surveying, accounting, pouring concrete, laying bricks, stretching wire, managing the people who do environmental studies, surveying, accounting, pouring concrete, laying bricks and stretching wire.

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Yet as long as these subsidies and tax credits exist, clean-energy executives will likely spend most of their time pursuing advanced legal and accounting methods rather than investing in studies, innovation, new transmission technology and turbine development.

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This rise in prestige has been mirrored by a revamp of undergraduate business programs, with the top ones increasingly resembling MBAs thanks to an emphasis on the rigorous study of economics, statistics and accounting and MBA-like teaching methods using case studies and team exercises.

CNN: Starting out young

First, economic planners and bankers have to start accounting for the hidden cost of carbon in power plant feasibility studies on their own volition.

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Arthur Fellow in the Accounting and Management unit at Harvard Business School, where he studies the political economy of corporate accountability and financial reporting.

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