According to a new report from investment bank Lazard, large-scale wind and solar are significantly cheaper energy sources than coal or gas, Renew Economy reported.
The 17th edition of Lazard's Levelised Cost of Energy+ (LCOE+) Analysis report assessed that onshore wind is the least costly form of energy, averaging around $50 per megawatt-hour. Utility-scale solar costs, on average, $61 per megawatt-hour, according to the report.
The costs of coal and gas were much higher — coal averaged $119 per megawatt-hour, and gas averaged $77 per megawatt-hour.
"Given relatively stable year-over-year averages, renewables continue to be cost-competitive with conventional generation, which will lead to the continued displacement of fossil fuels," the report said. "Other key takeaways include the need for diverse generation fleets to meet increasing power demands (driven by AI, data center deployment, etc.) and the impact that innovation can and must continue to have on the future of our energy sector."
The Lazard report echoes similar findings from other financial reports on clean energy, such as one from the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems that showed that solar is cheaper than coal or gas even when combined with storage costs.
The fact that data shows that clean, renewable energy sources such as wind and solar are much cheaper to produce than outdated, dirty energy sources such as coal and gas is great news for our planet.
It is vital that we make the switch as quickly as possible, as air pollution caused by dirty energy is warming our planet at an alarming rate. It is melting glaciers, causing rising sea levels, leading to increasingly frequent and severe extreme weather events, and causing the spread of many diseases.
Since money talks, there is no reason — save for lobbying from the already-powerful dirty energy companies — for governments to be slow to switch to clean, renewable energy, cleaning up our planet and saving us huge amounts of money at the same time.
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