Renewable electricity for sustainable development in Turkey

Abstract

In order to reduce dependency on imported expensive fossil fuels, Turkey should be used the renewable energy sources including hydropower, wind, solar, geothermal and biomass energy for electricity generation, because they are domestic and abundant. However considering the total cost of renewable energy production, these sources can be used not to replace the fossil fuels, but to supply energy requirement in the country. Renewable energy is being pointed as a potentially significant new source of jobs and climate change mitigation. The use of renewable energy resources, primarily hydropower, wind and solar, is expected to grow significantly within Turkey’s power system. There has been tremendous growth in the installed renewable electricity generation capacity in recent years and Turkey saw a record year in 2017. As deployment of renewable electricity generation technologies is on the eve of acceleration, there is a need to better understand how the rising share of wind and solar will affect Turkey’s power system. This paper discusses the status, features, and trends, as well as technical potentials of renewable energy for electricity generation in Turkey. The present study also shows that there is enough renewable potential for meeting the country energy and electricity demand.