Yesterday the CSIRO released the 2024-25 GenCost Final Report, produced in collaboration with AEMO. This follows the consultation draft from December. The report aims to provide a view of the relative costs of building and running generators of various technologies up to 2050. The report is now in its seventh year.

As in previous years, the Long-Run/Levelised Cost of Energy (LCOE) metric features prominently in the report. We’ve written before about how fraught LCOE is when used as a mechanism to compare long-run costs across technologies and that it’s of most use when trended for a single technology over multiple years. Perhaps acknowledging this, the report devotes a page to expressing some of the limitations and concerns around LCOE.

The report did include this chart below showing changes in the much less contentious ‘Capital Cost’ for a sub-set of the featured technologies over the last 3 years.

Media Coverage

For useful reference to our readers, below is a summary of the media coverage about the report that we’ve noted so far:

ABC

• Sarah Morice spoke to CSIRO’s Paul Graham on ABC News Radio

Australian Financial Review

• Angela Macdonald-Smith published Huge extra costs for first offshore wind, nuclear plant: CSIRO

The Australian

• Perry Williams published Coal, renewables jostle for energy costs crown

Sydney Morning Herald

• Nick Toscano published Australia’s green power switch may cost more than first thought: CSIRO

RenewEconomy

• Giles Parkinson published Angry nuclear lobby backs off as landmark SMR deal confirms CSIRO’s bleak cost estimates

Other

• David Carroll from PV Magazine published CSIRO report shows firmed renewables remain lowest-cost option
• Tim Hall from Ecogeneration published CSIRO shows wind, solar and batteries carry lowest cost
• Laurence Karacsony from Sky News published Facts can no longer be concealed’: Labor’s renewables push undermined by CSIRO report proving coal is ‘king’, energy expert claims