The story that has really captured the imagination of our readers this year has been on the Bloomberg New Energy Finance analysis that demonstrated that wind energy was already cheaper than new coal and gas plants in Australia, and solar PV was not all that behind.

Because of that interest, we’ve decided that today’s Graph of the Day should be another set from the BNEF report, because they demonstrate so vividly how the technology costs of wind, solar PV, solar thermal, biomass and even geothermal fall below rising coal and gas plant costs over the coming decades.

Remember when looking at this graph of the day that Australia needs no new baseload power plants for another 10 years – that’s according to the Australian Energy Market Operator and the utilities themselves. So this shows that the new plants we are getting built now – wind farms, thanks to the renewable energy target – are the cheapest option.

By the time 2020 comes around, solar PV will have well and truly joined wind on the southern side of the cost curve (and will no doubt be competing for space in the RET), and solar thermal – with its ability for storage and dispatchable energy, […]