Levelized cost of electricity generated from renewables increasingly competitive with conventional generation.

Insights based on a recent IEA assessment of 243 plants in 24 countries:
– RES generation costs (based on levelized cost of electricity (LCOE)) continue to decrease
– even with assumed moderate emission costs of USD 30/tCO2 they are now – for green fields – competitive with dispatchable fossil generation in many countries
– onshore wind is expected to have, on average and in the majority of countries, the lowest LCOE in 2025
– also solar PV, if deployed at large scales and under favourable climatic conditions, can be very cost competitive
– offshore wind has seen a major cost decrease and is about to become competitive with conventional generation
– where suitable sites exist, hydro is highly competitive
– nuclear remains the dispatchable low-carbon technology with the lowest expected costs in 2025 (but without consideration of the potentially massive external costs)

However, generalization has its limits and specific LCOE can vary due to different locational conditions even within a country substantially.

Nonetheless, in Europe, the most scalable technologies onshore wind and utility scale PV are already competitive to gas (CCGT).