Costs and Maturity

Some renewable energy technologies are still quite expensive to produce. However, the more mature technologies are becoming competitive with fossil fuel technologies. Some of the current factors involved in cost reduction are: the scaling up of facilities; production of increasing volumes of a technology; and technological developments. In future, fossil fuel technologies will become more expensive when a price is placed on carbon and as fossil fuels become more and more difficult to locate and extract.

When taking into consideration the environmental and social costs of fossil fuel technologies as well as the economic costs, using a triple bottom line approach, renewable energy technologies may well be more cost effective already.

Maturity of Renewable Energy Technologies