The International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) has released new data on the capital costs of solar PV, onshore and offshore wind for the period 2020-2021. The results show that Germany and the Netherlands have the lowest capital costs in Europe, both at 2.2%, while those in the US, China, India and Australia are 5.4%, 3.9%, 7.1% and 4.6% respectively.

IRENA has released its first report on the cost of financing renewable energy, covering solar PV, onshore and offshore wind technologies in all major global markets.

The agency drew data from 172 survey responses and 33 interviews with 56 experts providing cost of capital (CoC) data for at least one of the three renewable energy technologies from 45 countries on six continents.

The results show that Germany and the Netherlands have the lowest capital costs for utility-scale PV of all regions surveyed, at 2.2% each. In Europe, Sweden follows at 3%, Denmark and the UK at 3.3%. Spain, France and Italy have CoCs of 5.1%, 3.4% and 4.3%, respectively. Ireland, Portugal and Ukraine had the least favorable results at 9.9%, 10% and 12.2% respectively.

In North America, the United States has a CoC of 5.4%, while Mexico has a CoC of 8.7%. In South America, Chile beat Brazil's 7.6 percent with 5.7 percent. The best results in the African region were South Africa and Kenya, both at 6.9%, while Tunisia had the worst results at 10.7%. China leads the global cost of capital at 3.9%, by Australia at 4.6%, by India at 7.1%.

Mature PV markets reflect good capital costs in China, North America and Western Europe, IRENA said.