A milestone for the energy transition arrived this week with the kind of headline that climate analysts have been waiting more than a decade to write. According to a new report released on May 6, 2026, by the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), solar and wind power paired with battery storage can now provide reliable, around-the-clock electricity at a lower cost than newly built coal and gas plants in many parts of the world.
The analysis, titled “24/7 renewables: The economics of firm solar and wind,” introduces a new metric called the firm levelised cost of electricity, or firm LCOE. Unlike older comparisons that judged solar and wind only on the cheap power they produce while the sun shines and the wind blows, firm LCOE measures the cost of delivering steady, dispatchable electricity day and night — the kind utilities need to keep the grid running.
The results are striking. Firm costs for co-located solar plus battery projects have fallen from above $100 per megawatt-hour in 2020 to roughly $54–$82 per megawatt-hour in 2025 at high-irradiance solar regions and strong wind corridors. That undercuts new coal-fired generation in most major markets and beats new combined-cycle gas plants in many of them, even before fuel price volatility is factored in.
“The economics of clean, firm power have decisively shifted,” IRENA Director-General Francesco La Camera said in a statement accompanying the report. He pointed to plummeting battery costs, larger-scale solar deployment, and the rapid maturation of grid-forming inverters as the trio of advances driving the new numbers.
The report focuses on hybrid systems that combine utility-scale solar photovoltaic arrays, onshore wind turbines, and lithium-ion battery storage at the same site. By co-locating the assets and sharing transmission infrastructure, developers can dispatch electricity 24 hours a day with high reliability — sometimes called “firm” or “baseload-equivalent” renewable power.
The shift is already showing up in real markets. India, Australia, Saudi Arabia, Chile, Spain, and parts of the United States have all seen recent power purchase agreements for round-the-clock renewables priced under their fossil-fueled alternatives. Last month, a tender in Saudi Arabia awarded a 24-hour solar-plus-storage contract at one of the lowest dispatchable energy prices ever recorded.
IRENA expects the trend to accelerate. The agency projects that levelised costs for solar plus storage will drop another 30 percent by 2030 and around 40 percent by 2035, pushing the best-performing sites below $50 per megawatt-hour. Wind plus storage is on a similar trajectory, especially as longer-duration battery technologies mature.
For electricity-hungry sectors, the implications are immediate. Data center operators, electric vehicle charging networks, and green hydrogen producers — all of which need consistent, low-carbon electricity — now have a credible commercial path to running entirely on renewables without relying on grid emissions. The report singles out emerging green industrial corridors in Morocco, Brazil, and the U.S. Sun Belt as likely beneficiaries.
There are caveats. Firm LCOE varies sharply with geography, and regions with weaker solar or wind resources still see higher costs that fossil generation can match. Permitting, grid interconnection queues, and supply chains for batteries remain real bottlenecks. But the trajectory is unmistakable: every year, the share of the planet where 24/7 clean power is the cheapest option grows.
That shift, La Camera argued, changes the conversation about decarbonization from “how do we afford it?” to “how fast can we build it?” For policymakers writing the next round of energy plans, the answer increasingly looks like a question of permits and transmission lines, not subsidies. The cleanest electricity, in other words, is now also the cheapest — and the technology to deliver it whenever it’s needed is finally here.
