Historical and future projected costs of capital for ten energy technologies across 176 countries
File(s)
Published version
Author(s)
Hatton, Luke
Staffell, Iain
Oluleye, Gbemi
Jansen, Malte
Hawkes, Adam
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
Accelerating the deployment of clean generation technologies will be key to achieving global climate targets, yet accurately modelling the financial conditions they face is challenging. The cost of capital (or discount rate) is a key input for energy system models, which are used widely to explore future decarbonisation scenarios. Despite its importance, data on the cost of capital is typically outdated, closed-source and geographically concentrated. Even for countries with substantial technology deployment, accessing empirical data can be difficult, leading to the use of standard assumptions in modelling which can substantially bias results (due to the high capital intensity of clean technologies). Here, we provide estimates of the cost of capital for 10 generation technologies at a national level (including solar, wind, bioenergy, and natural gas with carbon capture) for 176 countries, for 2015 to 2030 spanning 27,640 data points. An interactive web tool available at wacc-forecaster.streamlit.app has also been produced to visualise estimates for given years, countries and technologies, making results more accessible to a range of audiences.
Date Issued
2025-12-04
Date Acceptance
2025-10-22
Citation
Scientific Data, 2025, 12
ISSN
2052-4463
Publisher
Nature Portfolio
Journal / Book Title
Scientific Data
Volume
12
Copyright Statement
© The Author(s) 2025 Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
License URL
Publication Status
Published
Article Number
1912
Date Publish Online
2025-12-04