Renewable and sustainable energy policies in Turkey: a review

Abstract

Renewable energy technologies increase their hold across developing and emerging economies throughout the recent years. Most new renewable energy capacity is installed in developing countries, and largely in China, the single largest developer of renewable power and heat over the past eight years. In 2016, renewable energy spread to a growing number of developing and emerging economies, some of which have become important markets. Turkey has a limited amount of fossil fuels, thus is dependent on foreign energy. Approximately 75% of current energy consumption is met by imports. However, Turkey has a high potential of renewables such as biomass, hydropower, wind, solar, geothermal energy, but the current utilization rate of these resources is very low. In recent years, in Turkey, hydraulic, solar, geothermal, and wind-based energy production has started to become widespread; producing energy out of biomass is widely used only via direct incineration. Turkey is rich in biomass and has adequate facilities and environmental conditions in terms of the development of this resource. In order to reduce the dependence of Turkey on foreign energy, transition to energy forestry and energy agriculture, development of obtaining biofuel from them and wastes, and biogas obtained from fertilizers, waste and garbage are required to be given importance. The present study gives renewable and sustainable energy policies in Turkey.