Turkey aims to boost clean energy deployment
ANKARA - Anadolu Agency
Turkey has revised its renewable energy target for 2023, with additional steps to increase the share of clean electricity production from 31 percent to more than 50 percent by 2023.
In May 2018, Turkey’s Energy Watchdog head said installed electricity capacity increased by 181 percent from 32 thousand megawatts (MW) over the last 15 years up to 90 thousand MW. The share of renewable electricity capacity out of total installed capacity reached 46 percent in May, while renewable electricity generation was around 30 percent.
In 2013, in accordance with Turkey’s National Renewable Energy Action Plan, Turkey’s renewable electricity share was 29 percent and the share of installed clean energy capacity was around 40 percent.
After hitting 31 percent of renewable electricity production in August 2018, Turkey’s authorities took concrete investment steps to revise its renewable target for 2023.
On Aug. 3, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan announced the country’s 100-day action plan to develop the domestic energy sector with domestic energy sources including wind, solar and geothermal power.
As part of the country’s 100-day action plan, the country aims to use more renewables through a series of tenders for solar power plants with a total capacity of 3 gigawatts (GW) and with an anticipated investment of nearly $4.8 billion.
The country also plans to boost both its wind and solar capacity by 10,000 MW each in the coming decade through Renewable Energy Resource Areas (YEKA) tenders.
The Turkish Energy and Natural Resources Ministry will accept applications up to Oct. 23 for one of the biggest offshore wind plants in the world at 1,200 MW, which will also be the first of its kind in the country.
The ministry will soon begin appraising consortium applicants for the wind tender, the date and place of which has yet to be confirmed. The ceiling price for one megawatt-hour in the reverse bid auction has been set at $8.
Part of the tender stipulates that the winning investor, who submits the lowest bid, will sign an energy purchase agreement with Turkey’s Energy and Natural Resources Ministry for the first 50 terawatt-hours of electricity production starting from the first commissioning of the plant.
The tender specifications require 60 percent local equipment production and call for 80 percent of the engineers employed to be of Turkish origin.
Saros and Gallipoli located in the Marmara region and Kıyıköy in Thrace were named the candidate regions for the power plant in March.
Solar energy developments
In April, Turkey’s former Energy and Natural Resources Minister Berat Albayrak said as Turkey ranks second after China in terms of world energy growth demand, it would increase its energy capacity amid a process of continuous development in the sector.
Albayrak asserted that new technology is an important element in Turkey’s evolving renewables sector.
“We have seen in the last 20 years that the role of renewable energy has changed a lot and costs have dramatically fallen thanks to advanced technology,” Albayrak said.
Meanwhile, to bolster Turkey’s electricity sector, Turkey’s Electricity Distribution Services Association (ELDER) head Serhat Çeçen said around $23 billion had been allocated for electricity distribution and privatization over the last 10 years.
A total of $13 billion was used for distribution and retail while $10 billion was allocated for the privatization of production facilities.
Loans covered 80 percent of the total amount for privatization while equities met the remaining 20 percent.
Meanwhile, despite the power sector expenditure, Turkey places importance on energy efficiency and aims to save $30.2 billion by 2033 in line with its National Energy Efficiency Action Plan announced in April.
