According to "The Growing Market for Clean Energy Portfolios" report by the Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI), renewable energy sources and energy storage systems (ESS) have become cheaper than most proposed gas-fired power plant projects (US). The so-called clean energy portfolios (CEP) have a lower cost than 90% of the current 68 GW of proposed gas-fired capacity (56 GW combined-cycle plants and 12 GW of combustion turbine plants). There are US$90bn of planned gas-fired capacity announced to be developed through the next 10–15 years. If those were to be replaced by CEP, customers would save over US$29bn and CO2 emissions would be reduced by 100 Mt/year.
The report shows that CEP costs have decreased by 80% since 2010 and, in 2019, are already lower than the costs of building and operating a new gas plant. The reality is that CEPs are likely to undercut the operating costs of over 90% of proposed new combined-cycle capacity by 2035 resulting in a significant risk of investment capital becoming stranded. This trend could be accelerated by 10 years (to early-2020) with a carbon price of US$50/CO2, according to the report.
Furthermore, there are US$30bn in proposed gas pipelines projects, which would also be impacted by stranded asset risk.
Interested in Global Energy Research?
Enerdata's premium online information service provides up-to-date market reports on 110+ countries. The reports include valuable market data and analysis as well as a daily newsfeed, curated by our energy analysts, on the oil, gas, coal and power markets.
This user-friendly tool gives you the essentials about the domestic markets of your concern, including market structure, organisation, actors, projects and business perspectives.