Renewable energy technologies often face high upfront costs, making financing conditions highly relevant. Thus far, the dynamics of financing conditions are poorly understood. Here, we provide empirical data covering 133 representative utility-scale photovoltaic and onshore wind projects in Germany over the last 18 years. These data reveal that financing conditions have strongly improved. As drivers, we identify macroeconomic conditions (general interest rate) and experience effects within the renewable energy finance industry. For the latter, we estimate experience rates. These two effects contribute 5% (photovoltaic) and 24% (wind) to the observed reductions in levelized costs of electricity (LCOEs). Our results imply that extant studies may overestimate technological learning and that increases in the general interest rate may increase renewable energies’ LCOEs, casting doubt on the efficacy of plans to phase out policy support.

可再生能源技术通常面临高昂的前期成本，从而使融资条件变得尤为重要。迄今为止，人们对融资条件的动态了解甚少。在这里，我们提供的经验数据涵盖了过去18年中德国133个代表性的公用事业规模的光伏和陆上风能项目。这些数据表明，融资条件已大大改善。作为推动因素，我们确定宏观经济条件（一般利率）并在可再生能源金融行业中体验影响。对于后者，我们估计经验率。这两种效应为观察到的平均电力成本（LCOE）的降低贡献了5％（光伏）和24％（风）。