The Obituary for LCOE, “LCOE – a faithful friend amongst equals now lies here.”

Andy Boston from the Energy Research Partnership in the UK has written a great article that presses on an issue that has concerned me for some time, the use of the levelised costs of electricity (LCOE) to compare low carbon technologies. In his article “the levelised cost of fruit” see http://erpuk.org/levelised-cost-fruit/ he dismisses the use of LCOE and declares it dead as a comparator.

He argues that we need to start talking about the total system cost and the value of technologies in reducing that cost relative to a default option such as building CCGTs to meet demand. This he believes is the way forward and I totally agree with him.