renewable energy in turkey

Write an amazing title here

WRITE A SUBTITLE

Turkey has become one of the fastest growing energy markets in the world, paralleling its economic growth over the last 15 years. The success of a privatization program that has been ongoing since 2002 has resulted in power distribution now completely in private sector hands, while the privatization of power generation assets is set to be completed within the next few years. This privatization program has given the country’s energy sector a highly competitive structure and new horizons for growth.

Hydroelectric power in turkeyRenewable energy supply in Turkey is dominated by hydropower and biomass but environmental and scarcity-of-supply concerns have led to a decline in biomass use, mainly for residential heating. Total renewable energy supply declined from 1990 to 2007, due to a decrease in biomass supply As a result, the composition of renewable energy supply has changed and wind power is beginning to claim market share. As a contributor of air pollution and deforestation, the share of biomass in the renewable energy share is expected to decrease with the expansion of other renewable energy sources.

Wind Energy in TurkeyCovering its energy requirement from fossil energy sources for the most part, Turkey relies on outside sources to procure energy required for its economy and different sectors. Similarly, Turkey had produced 83 pct of the overall electricity in 2008 out of fossil energy sources. Future projectors indicate that the energy requirement of our country would augment and foreign-dependency in energy would thus increase accordingly. The on-going studies state that especially hydraulic power and wind energy potential, as part of the renewable energy sources of Turkey, are highly important and each of these two sources has the technical potential to cover the electric production in 2008. The recent increase in the number of wind energy power stations can be related to the preparation of Turkish Wind Atlas, the preparation of legal arrangements to support private sector entrepreneurs and the rise in oil prices. Wind energy power stations are active in Marmara, Aegean region and the Mediterreanean region witnessing more constant and strong winds and are anticipated to be founded in other geographical regions as well in the future.

Turkey's geothermal energy potential suitable for electricity generation was estimated at nearly 4500 MW. In Turkey, work on power production from geothermal energy started in the second half of the 20th century. However, capacity build up and investments accelerated after 2000s. This is mostly related to Turkey's staggering economic growth in the last 10 years, which concurrently increased the country's energy demand. Also, renewable energy, especially geothermal energy, legislations passed and laws enacted in the last 10 years eased the process. The subsidies and supports to the private sector also positively affected the development of geothermal power plants. The growth of Turkey's energy market is a part of Turkey's ambitious Vision 2023 energy targets. One of the main aims of which is to produce 30% of Turkey's electricity demand in 2023 from renewable energy sources. However, geothermal energy has the smallest share (in terms of installed capacity) in the Vision 2023 energy targets set at 600 MW by the year 2023 (target, as of 2015, can be modified). This means geothermal power plants could only provide 0.5% of Turkey's installed capacity, which was estimated as 120,000 MW in the year 2023. In this study, it was pinpointed that geothermal energy installed capacity of Turkey reached to 623.9 MW at the end of 2015. This is critically important for the realisation of the Vision 2023 energy targets, and it is the first renewable energy target that has been fulfilled before 2023. Also, in this study, it was suggested to modify the Vision 2023 targets to increase the geothermal energy installed capacity to 1000 MW. By this way, the share of geothermal energy in Turkey's installed capacity of 2023 could rise to nearly 0.8%.