Renewable energy for rural development in Turkey

Abstract

In last three decades, Turkey’s rural energy development has achieved some success. The average cooking efficiencies increased from 25% in 1980 to 60% in 2010, more than 99% of townships and villages have electric connection, remarkable progress in biomass, hydropower and other renewable energy also has been made. Since the late 1980s, both the rural economy and rural energy consumption have changed dramatically. In order to reduce dependency on imported expensive fossil fuels, Turkey should be used the renewable energy sources, 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. This paper discusses the status, features, and trends, as well as technical potentials of renewable energy for rural development in Turkey. The present study also shows that there is enough renewable potential for meeting the country energy and electricity demand.