Power generation costs

IRENA has tracked the costs and performance of renewable energy technologies and fuels since 2012. As renewable energy, and in particular power generation, has entered a virtuous cycle of falling costs, increasing deployment and accelerated technological progress, up-to-date data on costs has become a critical for policy makers, business, researchers and others. Solar PV module prices have fallen by around 90% since the end of 2009, while wind turbine prices have fallen by 49-78% since 2010 making renewable energy cost competitive.

IRENA’s cost analysis programme has improved the publicly available analysis and data on costs to allow policy makers and investors to make robust decisions about the role of renewables. The IRENA Renewable Cost Database contains around 20 000 utility-scale renewable power generation projects and 13 000 PPA and tender and auction results that provide new insights into trends in the costs and performance of renewables. The IRENA Renewable Costing Alliance of companies, industry associations, governments and researchers, is helping to expand the database by sharing confidentially, their data for real-world renewable energy projects.

By improving the quality of renewable cost data and analysis in the public domain, IRENA provides up-to-date information on renewable energy technologies, their costs and cost-reduction potential to all stakeholders.

IRENA strives to make all its analysis easily available and ensure it is disseminated as widely as possible to educate stakeholders about the true costs of renewables and their market potential. A set of cost related presentations and webinars is available. These may be freely used subject to IRENA’s standard terms of use.