IRENA: Renewables with storage cost-competitive with fossil fuels for round-the-clock power

May 13, 2026

Firm solar-plus-storage costs fell to US$54–82/MWh in 2025 in high-resource regions, with further declines to below US$50/MWh expected by 2035, according to IRENA. Image: IRENA.

Solar PV and wind are now the cheapest sources of power globally, with co-located hybrid systems increasingly delivering round-the-clock electricity at fossil fuel-competitive costs in high-resource regions, according to a new report by the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA).

In its report titled ‘24/7 renewables: The economics of firm solar and wind’, IRENA highlighted that while renewable energy deployment has scaled rapidly on the back of falling costs, the next phase of the energy transition will be defined by system adequacy and flexibility – ensuring clean electricity is available whenever and wherever it is needed.

The report introduced a new project-level metric, “firm levelised cost of electricity (LCOE)”, to assess the cost of delivering continuous electricity from hybrid systems combining solar PV, onshore wind and battery energy storage systems (BESS).