Organic Rankine, Kalina and sCO2 cycles: Correlation
Prices it moves with, and why
ORC, Kalina and supercritical carbon dioxide units are factory-built modules whose cost depends on turbines, heat exchangers and the working fluid. Their value is the power made from heat that would be wasted, so electricity prices and policy decide uptake.
No public price Organic Rankine, Kalina and sCO2 cycles has no public monthly price series: Niche, project-priced equipment; no public price series.What its price moves with
Most organic Rankine units use fluorinated or hydrocarbon working fluids. Rules phasing down high-warming fluorinated gases raise costs and push designers to newer fluids. The technology has no price series, so no statistics are shown.
Not enough overlapping price history to measure.Evaporators, condensers and recuperators make up a large share of an ORC unit's cost, more than in steam plants, because low-temperature heat needs large surfaces. Exchanger prices therefore shape project cost.
Not enough overlapping price history to measure.Many geothermal plants with moderate temperatures run binary ORC cycles, and geothermal is the largest market for ORC units. Geothermal growth therefore drives ORC orders and cost reductions. Biomass plants and engine exhaust are the other main markets.
Not enough overlapping price history to measure.Steam Rankine is cheaper per unit of power at high temperatures and large sizes, while ORC wins for lower temperatures and small units. Plants choose between them by the heat source, so they compete at the boundary.
Not enough overlapping price history to measure.Supercritical carbon dioxide cycles use compact turbines and could beat steam in some plants. Carbon dioxide is cheap and widely available, so fluid cost matters little; the challenge is materials and engineering.
Not enough overlapping price history to measure.ORC units replace electricity that factories would otherwise buy, so industrial tariffs set their value. High tariffs, as in parts of Europe and India, make low-grade heat recovery more attractive.
Not enough overlapping price history to measure.How to read these numbers
Correlation of monthly changes (the number in the coloured pill) compares how much each price moved, month by month, since 2006 or the first month both series exist. It runs from −1 to +1: near +1 the two usually rise and fall in the same months, near 0 there is no link, and a negative number means they tend to move in opposite directions. Above 0.7 is strong, 0.4 to 0.7 moderate, 0.2 to 0.4 weak.
12-month changes compare year-on-year moves, which shows whether two prices share the same cycles even when the month-to-month noise differs.
Price function is a straight-line fit of the two prices on logarithmic scales: price ≈ k × (partner price)β. β is how much this price moves, in per cent, for a 1% move in the partner over the whole period, and R² is the share of the variation the fit explains. Two prices that both drift up with inflation can fit well without any real link, so read it together with the monthly correlation.
Lead or lag checks whether the monthly correlation is clearly higher when one price is shifted by 1 to 6 months.
Correlation is not cause. The reasons on each card explain the economic link; the numbers show how strongly it has shown up in prices. Proxy series are US producer price indexes or related prices and can blur the real link.
Data: World Bank Commodity Price Data (Pink Sheet), October 2026; US Bureau of Labor Statistics producer price indexes, IMF primary commodity prices and US EIA prices via FRED, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, retrieved November 2026. Calculations by this site.