Chapter 9: Economic evaluation and assessment

The figures below show the production costs for each renewable energy source. More than 90 international publications published since 2015 that have independently and comprehensively calculated production costs have been analysed. Depending on the state of the art, site-specific plant concepts and associated investment, resource and operating costs, as well as the methodology used to calculate the costs, the ranges are sometimes wide. The median can be used as a guide for a weighted value from all cited studies. Few studies identify pathways that are competitive at current fossil fuel prices, meaning that subsidies or CO₂ pricing would be required to make all options viable. The graph is therefore only indicative of how the options can be ranked in terms of their production costs.