Securing Turkey’s energy supply security and balancing the current account deficit through renewable energy

Turkey’s socio-eco­nom­ic growth has been accom­pa­nied by increas­ing ener­gy demand, there­by expand­ing the oppor­tu­ni­ties to enable mul­ti­ple co-ben­e­fits involv­ing both secur­ing the country’s future ener­gy sup­ply and util­is­ing local and clean ener­gy sources. The ener­gy tran­si­tion is induc­ing new invest­ments in the elec­tric­i­ty pro­duc­tion and infra­struc­ture sec­tors world­wide. By pre­dom­i­nant­ly rely­ing on fos­sil fuel resources to meet its increas­ing ener­gy demand, Turkey faces sig­nif­i­cant risk of exac­er­bat­ing the cur­rent account deficit in the ener­gy sector’s trade bal­ance and also increas­ing its depen­den­cy on ener­gy imports in the future. Elec­tric­i­ty gen­er­a­tion tech­nolo­gies that utilise local and renew­able ener­gy sources can con­tribute to reduc­ing ener­gy import dependency.

 

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Key policy opportunities:

Pol­i­cy oppor­tu­ni­ty 1: Turkey can fos­ter its ener­gy inde­pen­dence and ensure secu­ri­ty of sup­ply by increas­ing the use of its renew­able ener­gy sources. Increas­ing the share of renew­able ener­gy in pow­er gen­er­a­tion will con­tribute to increas­ing inde­pen­dence from fos­sil fuel imports and to reduc­ing the cur­rent account deficit in the ener­gy sector’s trade balance.

Pol­i­cy oppor­tu­ni­ty 2: By the year 2028 Turkey can reduce its nat­ur­al gas con­sump­tion by 16% and 155 mil­lion MMBTU (mil­lion British Ther­mal Units) through scal­ing up renew­able pow­er gen­er­a­tion with­out the need to increase fore­seen invest­ment in the trans­mis­sion system.

Pol­i­cy oppor­tu­ni­ty 3: Annu­al eco­nom­ic sav­ings on fos­sil fuels and fos­sil fuel imports can amount to USD 2.1 bil­lion by the year 2028 by increas­ing the share of renew­able ener­gy in pow­er gen­er­a­tion and mak­ing the trans­mis­sion sys­tem renewables-ready.

 

Year of pub­li­ca­tion: 2020

Edi­tors: Héctor Rodríguez, Sebas­t­ian Hel­gen­berg­er, Pınar Ertör, Lau­ra Nagel – IASS Pots­dam and Saban­ci Uni­ver­si­ty Istan­bul Pol­i­cy Cen­ter IPC

Tech­ni­cal imple­men­ta­tion: Saeed Teimourzadeh, Gok­turk Poyra­zoglu, Osman Bülent Tör. EPRA – Engi­neer­ing, Pro­cure­ment, Research, and Analysis

Sug­gest­ed cita­tion: IASS/IPC. 2020. Secur­ing Turkey’s ener­gy sup­ply and bal­anc­ing the cur­rent account deficit through renew­able ener­gy. Assess­ing the co-ben­e­fits of decar­bon­is­ing the pow­er sec­tor. COBENEFITS Report. Potsdam/Istanbul. www.cobenefits.info

 

This study is part of a series of four stud­ies assess­ing the co-ben­e­fits of decar­bon­is­ing the pow­er sec­tor in Turkey, edit­ed by IASS, IPC, EPRA and IET.