The cost of electricity associated with different production technologies (current and future or expected) is crucial for designing and identifying the best energy strategy as well as for scenario analyses and investors’ choices. Therefore, at the international level, it is considered essential to increase the availability of data so as to improve the confidence level of scenario projections. The International Energy Agency (IEA), together with NEA (Nuclear Energy Agency) and OECD (Organisation For Economic Co-operation and Development) has been editing for years and updating, usually every five years, the publication ‘Projected Costs of Generating Electricity’. RSE is part of the international working group that is collaborating in the drafting of the new edition of the document, which will probably be released in mid-2020. This action, in addition to providing a dutiful Italian contribution to the initiative, is also positive in view of its repercussions at the national level, since access to data from other countries can help confirm or improve the technical-economic information used for scenario analyses. To facilitate the collection and standardise the contents of data according to the needs of the calculation model used for LCOE assessments, IEA has prepared and delivered a questionnaire to the representatives of its each member states. RSE has taken charge of its dissemination in Italy, collecting a total of 51 completed questionnaires.

The returned questionnaires include both aggregate data, by category, and data referring to specific plants. For each technology, as can be easily understood, a significant reduction in specific costs is highlighted following the increase in the size of the plant.

The highest specific costs are attributable to geothermal plants (largely due to geological prospecting, drilling and steam collection works) and, secondarily, to small wind power plants. The most “traditional” technologies (OCGT and CCGT) showed the lowest specific costs. This information, together with other assumptions shared by the Working Group, will allow the LCOE to be calculated for each technology, both at the individual country level and the international level. In the study, in addition to the LCOE calculation, other metrics will be defined and explored in depth to integrate the cost analysis with a system perspective.