SRC-154

Electricity Generation Costs 2025, published January 2026, updated March 2026.

Commissioned by UK Government. Who paid for a study is recorded because it bears on how its conclusions should be read, not because it makes them wrong.

Published claims resting on this source

• CLM-0270 DESNZ estimated in its 2025 report that a new large solar farm built in the UK and commissioned in 2030 would generate power at about 60 pounds per megawatt-hour (6 pence per kilowatt-hour), and one commissioned in 2050 at about 49 pounds. Onshore wind is estimated at a similar cost; offshore wind is estimated at roughly double the cost of solar or onshore wind. These figures do not include the cost of storing power or balancing the grid.
• CLM-0271 DESNZ estimated that a new gas power station in the UK, run almost continuously, would generate power at about 111-112 pounds per megawatt-hour (about 11 pence per kilowatt-hour), whether commissioned in 2030 or 2050. A gas plant with carbon capture, run the same way, is estimated slightly cheaper. These are the closest dispatchable, always-available comparators in this report; they are gas-fired, not firmed renewables.
• CLM-0272 The UK government's 2025 cost report does not give a single number for what it would cost to make solar or wind power available around the clock; it says that working this out needs a full power-system model, which this report is not. It also does not publish specific cost figures for the UK's flagship nuclear projects, because those costs are commercially confidential.
• CLM-0544 The UK government's own cost model expects deep geothermal power, which it treats as an early-stage technology, to become much cheaper by 2050 than a first-of-a-kind plant would be in 2030.
• CLM-0524 Every UK-specific or typical-country cost-of-capital figure found sits well below the 20% rate Frazer-Nash used, even at the top of DESNZ's published range for floating offshore wind; only a global dataset covering the riskiest countries in the world reaches as high as 20%, and only at its extreme end.

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