Renewable energy has become an increasingly competitive way of meeting new power generation needs, according to a report from the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), as compared to the heavily-subsidized fossil fuel industry. Since 2018, costs from all commercially available renewable power generation technologies dropped around the world—a trend that has been on the decline since the early 2000s. 

Specifically, solar power concentration accounted for the biggest decrease of 26% of worldwide weighted average cost of electricity; while bioenergy, solar photovoltaics, geothermal, as well as onshore and offshore wind fell by 14%; and hydropower by 12%.

The IRENA report also cited the following findings:

• Onshore wind and solar PV power are now, frequently, less expensive than any fossil-fuel option, without financial assistance.
• New solar and wind installations will increasingly undercut even the operating-only costs of existing coal-fired plants.
• Low and falling technology costs make renewables the competitive backbone of energy decarbonisation – a crucial climate goal.
• Cost forecasts for solar PV and onshore wind continue to be revised as new data emerges, with renewables consistently beating earlier expectations.

Researchers from the U.S. and other countries have found various methods and/or technologies that can produce low-cost, sustainable, and abundant sources of renewable energy. In Canada, scientists have developed “a large-scale economical method to extract hydrogen (H2) from oil sands (natural bitumen) and oil fields” which can be applied to mainstream oil fields to produce hydrogen instead of oil to generate electricity and is already used to power hydrogen-powered vehicles, according to the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).

A new analysis from the University of Sussex and Aarhus University has also revealed that Europe has the “capacity to produce more than 100 times the amount of energy it currently produces and has the potential to supply enough energy for the whole world until 2050.” 

And at home, Under Secretary of Energy Mark W. Menezes noted that “with over 25 gigawatts in the development pipeline, U.S. offshore wind is poised to be a significant part of our comprehensive energy portfolio in the coming years.”