Full Title: Renewable Power Generation Costs in 2020
Author(s): International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA)
Publisher(s): International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA)
Publication Date: June 25, 2021
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Description (excerpt):
The decade 2010 to 2020 saw renewable power generation becoming the default economic choice for new capacity. In that period, the competitiveness of solar (concentrating solar power, utility‑scale solar photovoltaic) and offshore wind all joined onshore wind in the same range of costs as for new capacity fired by fossil fuels, calculated without financial support. Indeed, the trend is not only one of renewables competing with fossil fuels, but significantly undercutting them, when new electricity generation capacity is required.
IRENA’s cost analysis programme has been collecting and reporting the cost and performance data of renewable power generation technologies since 2012. The two core sources of data for the cost and performance metrics contained in this report are the IRENA Renewable Cost Database and the IRENA Auctions and Power Purchase Agreement (PPA) databases. This year, for the first time, the report also includes a snapshot of IRENA’s cost data for behind‑the‑meter battery storage and solar thermal technologies for industrial heat.
Along with reviewing overall cost trends and their drivers, the report analyses cost components in detail. The analysis spans around 20 000 renewable power generation projects from around the world, along with data from 13 000 auctions and power purchase agreements for renewables.