In my experience with new projects of this kind, these costs are included in economic studies since legislation has changed to make companies pay for decommissi

In my experience with new projects of this kind, these costs are included in economic studies since legislation has changed to make companies pay for decommissioning. This does not solve the problem however, because larger companies can just sell aging assets to smaller companies who then bleed them dry and when the time comes to decommission, declaring bankruptcy. In my opinion the only way to prevent this is to introduce legislation which makes executives liable for cleanup costs in some way. E.g. (1) Force companies to buy "cleanup insurance" , or (2) make it illegal to trade "insolvently" where company assets < Cost(cleanup). Either the executives pay for cleanup or are imprisoned. This is probably a naive policy prescription, I'm sure someone in the field could easily come up with something better.