“Wind and sun cheaper than coal”

The construction of new wind and solar power facilities is more economic than the construction of new coal and gas power plants, says an information paper by the Institute for Applied Ecology (Öko Institut), writes Gerald Traufetter in German weekly Der Spiegel. Full costs for renewables installations in Germany were at 40 - 70 euros per megawatt hour, while full costs for fossil installations were at 70 – 100 euros per megawatt hour, says the paper. Öko-Institut had written the paper as a fact check for German broadcaster ZDF, and references a study from January 2017, in which it had compared electricity systems based on renewables with those based on fossil sources.

Read an online version of the article in German here and download the paper in German here.

For background, read the CLEW news digest item “Renewable vs fossil power systems: a cost comparison”.