The landmark report, Renewable Power Generation Costs in 2014, concludes that biomass, hydropower, geothermal and onshore wind are all competitive with or cheaper than coal, oil and gas-fired power stations, even without financial support and despite falling oil prices.
For geothermal the highlights are:
- Geothermal power generation is a mature, commercially available solution to provide lowcost base load capacity in areas with excellent high-temperature resources that are close to the surface.
- Between 2007 and 2014, the LCOE of geothermal varied from as low as USD 0.04/kWh for second-stage development of a field to as high as USD 0.14/kWh for greenfield developments.
- Geothermal power plants are capital intensive, but they have very low and predictable running costs. Development costs have increased over time as engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) costs and commodity prices have risen, as well as because of the rise in drilling costs, which is in line with trends in the oil and gas sectors.
- Total installed costs appear to have stabilized, but deployment remains modest, and not enough data is available to identify if this is statistically significant.
- Projects that are planned for the period 2015 to 2020 expect to be able to reduce installed costs below recent levels.
