New report by IRENA shows the competitiveness of geothermal based on LCOE

IRENA has released its latest report on Renewable Power Generation Costs in 2017, which highlights cost for renewable energy projects and levelized cost of electricity generation, showing the continued competitiveness of geothermal energy.

The Report highlights the latest trends for each of the main renewable power technologies, based on the latest cost and auction price data from projects around the world.

Broadly, the study finds:

• Renewable power generation costs continue to fall and are already very competitive to meet needs for new capacity.
• Competitive procurement – including auctions – accounts for a small fraction of global renewable energy deployment. Yet these mechanisms are very rapidly driving down costs in new markets..
• Global competition is helping to spread the best project development practices, reducing technology and project risk and making renewables more cost-competitive than ever before.

The IRENA Renewable Cost Database includes 15,000 data points for LCOE from projects around the globe, representing over 1,000 Gigawatts (GW) of power generation capacity. An additional auctions database encompasses over 7,000 projects with nearly 300 GW of capacity.

For geothermal energy, the report provides some rather interesting findings.

“By the end of 2016, geothermal global cumulative installed capacity was still relatively modest at 12.6  GW and was surpassed in installed capacity terms by offshore wind in that year. Geothermal electricity generation is a mature, base-load generation technology that can provide very competitive electricity where high quality resources are well-defined. The LCOE of conventional geothermal power varies from $0.05 to $0.13/kWh for recent projects. Yet the LCOE can be as low as USD 0.04/kWh for the most competitive projects, such as those which utilise excellent, well-documented resources and are brownfield developments.”

The report provides an overview on installed cost trends, capacity factors, and levelized cost of electricity generation.

Download the Executive Summary – Download the Report