Question to the Department for International Development:

To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, what estimate she has made of the relative costs of (a) coal, (b) gas, (c) oil, (d) nuclear, (e) offshore wind, (f) onshore wind, (g) large-scale hydro and (h) solar PV in the delivery of utility scale electrification in developing countries.

DFID is committed to supporting low-income countries to adopt climate-smart approaches to addressing their acute energy deficits. The relative costs of different technologies will depend on individual country contexts. Full life-cycle and environmental costs should be considered. In November 2015, Bloomberg New Energy Finance, with DFID support, published a study of costs of different technologies in 14 developing countries (‘Levelised Costs of Electricity’). Since this study was completed, there has been a rapid reduction in the costs of renewable technologies, especially solar.