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Renewables close to or equal to costs of fossil fuel power – IEA
Renewable energy sources can produce electricity at close to or even below the cost of new fossil fuel-based power stations, according to a new report from the International Energy Agency (IEA).
The report: Projected Costs of Generating Electricity: 2015 Edition, describes a significant drop in the price of solar and wind generation – especially for solar PV – due to technological progress with renewables. It also says that the levelised cost of electricity from new nuclear power plants is lower than other established baseload sources over the full lifetime of facilities, when financing costs are relatively low.
The report, published in partnership with the Nuclear Energy Agency, takes a detailed look at the contrasting costs for different power generation technologies around the world. It notes a significant drop in the price of renewable technologies since the last edition was published, five years ago.
No single technology proves the cheapest form of electricity generation under all circumstances, according to the report – local influences such as market structure, the policy environment and available resources all have an effect.
The report looks at generation costs at 180 plants – from large nuclear and fossil-fuel facilities to wind farms to small-scale solar PV installations – in 22 countries, including Brazil, China and South Africa. It then uses the data to project a range of levelised costs of electricity for the technologies in different countries in 2020.
The IEA finds that, in some countries, the costs associated with utility-scale solar PV and onshore wind can be comparable and often lower than the costs of fossil-fuel power.
