EECE 443 · Economics of generation
What does electricity cost?
Explore the levelized cost of energy: the lifetime cost of building and operating a power plant, per unit of electricity generated.
Unsubsidized generation costs
Cost of new generation 2026
Levelized cost of energy ($/MWh) Same scale in every year
The existing gas row shows the marginal cost of operating a fully depreciated plant. It excludes the original construction investment and is a separate comparison.
View selected-year data and source pages
| Technology | Low | High | Midpoint | Source |
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A useful comparison, with boundaries
Energy cost is one part of the picture.
These are generation cost estimates, not retail bills or a measure of round-the-clock reliability. Storage, firming, transmission, grid integration and environmental impacts can change a system-level comparison. Values are shown as reported, without converting all years to constant dollars.
Data & coverage
Every selected year includes the six core technologies: onshore wind, utility solar, combined-cycle gas, coal, gas peakers and nuclear. Offshore wind is not reported in 2009, has reported midpoints in 2010–2011, and has full ranges from 2012 onward. Each value links to its annual report and source page in the data table.
The existing-gas operating-cost comparison starts in 2020. Earlier years are marked “not reported.” Report year 2022 is absent from the source series. No costs are interpolated or carried across years.
Annual reports change financing, fuel prices, geography and technology assumptions. Early editions have broader illustrative scopes; recent editions focus on the U.S. Solar uses the crystalline utility-scale series where editions distinguish technologies. Some coal high cases include carbon capture; nuclear methods also change. Read the selected-year notes before comparing years. 2026 source: Lazard v19.0 ↗.