The Data Don’t Lie
Energy Bad Boys, July 19, 2025
During the debate on ending subsidies for wind and solar in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA), wind and solar advocates argued that wind and solar energy are significantly cheaper than coal or natural gas-fired power plants.
But real-world utility data show they couldn’t be more wrong.
Mitch dug through the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) Form 1 data for the ten largest investor-owned utilities in the Midcontinent Independent System Operator (MISO) regions, accounting for 63 percent of energy sales in 2024, and we found, unsurprisingly, that these plants produce electricity for a much lower cost than new wind turbines or solar panels.
The graph below compares the average cost of existing nuclear, natural gas, and coal plants in the MISO region in 2024 to unsubsidized, new-build wind and solar facilities. As you can see, existing nuclear was the lowest cost, followed by gas steamers, coal, and natural gas combined cycle plants
FERC Form 1 data were used for existing generators. New wind and solar costs were calculated using the U.S. EIA Assumptions to the Annual Energy Outlook 2025 Electricity Market Module. Wind and solar were assumed to have 45 percent and 23 percent capacity factors, respectively.
The existing nuclear, coal, and natural gas plants are incredibly affordable because they have already paid off almost all of their upfront capital costs, and utilities no longer earn much in the way of a rate of return on these depreciated assets. This means the existing plants are some of the lowest-cost, most reliable plants on the entire MISO system.
It’s also important to keep in mind that these are just the average costs for these resources, and some facilities, especially existing coal facilities, could operate at even lower costs if they were utilized more often, which would spread the fixed costs of generating electricity over more megawatt hours, thus reducing their per-unit price.
Rather than rehashing our previous critiques of the Levelized Cost of Energy (LCOE), we decided the best way to add value to this conversation would be to publish the LCOE of existing thermal plants in the MISO region so you can show the wind and solar boosters the error of their ways with our Existing Power Plant Cost Database
