Solar and Wind Power Expansion by Region

The cost of solar photovoltaic and wind electricity has fallen dramatically since around 2010: analyses published by the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) and by the financial advisory firm Lazard in its annual Levelized Cost of Energy reports show utility-scale solar costs declining by roughly 80 to 90 percent over the 2010s, driven largely by manufacturing scale-up, panel efficiency gains, and falling polysilicon costs, with onshore wind costs falling substantially as well, making both technologies cost-competitive with, and often cheaper than, new fossil-fuel generation in many markets by the early 2020s. China has emerged as the dominant force in this expansion, manufacturing the large majority of the world's solar panels and wind turbine components and, in some recent years, installing more new solar capacity domestically than the rest of the world combined, concentrated especially in provinces such as Xinjiang and Inner Mongolia with abundant sun, wind, and open land.