Onshore wind is the cheapest source of new electricity in the world

By Max van Someren | 30 October 2026

Onshore wind is the cheapest source of new electricity in the world.

That's not a headline you'll hear much in Melbourne this week.

Judging by my feed, everyone in Australian renewables is at All Energy Australia right now. I'm not though – after two other conferences in the past ten days, a third felt like it would be pushing my luck, both at home and with my inbox. So I'm back in Perth with FOMO for company instead.

The upside of staying put is that I've had time to read a few reports properly. The International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA)'s Renewable Power Generation Costs in 2025, published this year, was one that stood out. From the executive summary:

"Onshore wind remained the most affordable new power source, with a global weighted-average levelised cost of electricity (LCOE) of USD 33 per megawatt hour (MWh), followed by solar PV at USD 44/MWh and offshore wind at USD 78/MWh."

That flies in the face of my normal assumptions – in Australia, I'd have put my money on solar.

So why is wind so cheap? Like many things in the renewables industry, much of the answer lies in China. The average is weighted by volume. China built 113GW of the 150GW of onshore wind added worldwide in 2025, at USD 27/MWh (about AUD$39) according to the report. Take China out and the global average rises to USD 51/MWh.

In Australia, CSIRO's GenCost 2025-26 puts new onshore wind at AUD$78–129/MWh, against AUD$52–88/MWh for solar. Even the bottom of the wind range is twice China's figure.

So what's the difference?

Some ideas, in no particular order: China makes its own turbines and builds them at enormous scale. Approvals and connection standards are streamlined. Installation labour is cheaper, finance is cheap, and the turbines don't have to be shipped all the way to Australia.

Some of those are savings we'll never see. We're not going to match Chinese labour costs (nor would we want to), and the finance comes with a context of its own. But not all of the gap can be explained that way. Approvals, connection standards and the repeatability that comes with scale are all things we have at least some control over.

So, has anyone studied the difference in detail? If you have, or know someone who has, I'd be very glad to hear from you. Are there lessons we could draw to bring down the cost of onshore wind in Australia?

Perhaps the answer was at All-Energy. Let me know if it was and I missed it...