Turkey's renewable energy capacity has registered a remarkable surge over the last decade, with a steady increase of 11% per year amid a 7% annual capacity rise in other fuels for power generation, Deputy Energy and Natural Resources Minister Alparslan Bayraktar said Thursday during his remarks at a renewable energy conference in Istanbul.
Turkey's installed power capacity was calculated at a total of 91,267 megawatts (MW) by the end of last year. The installed capacity in renewables totals 45,000 MW, accounting for 49% of the total installed power, nearly half of it. Turkey now ranks sixth in Europe and 13th in the world in terms of renewable capacity. On June 5, 2019, the deputy minister said Turkey saw record-high figures in the power generation from renewables with 76%. It is pertinent to mention that 60% of the added installed power capacity has come from renewables.
While only around a decade ago, the country possessed only 15,500 MW in renewable capacity, which has now increase to 45,000 MW. According to data from the Turkish Electricity Transmission Corporation (TEİAŞ), solar power made up nearly 6.6% of the total installed power, with an approximate capacity of 6,000 MW. Meanwhile, wind power, with an installed capacity of 7,600 MW, accounted for 8.3% of Turkey's aggregate installed power.
Launched in 2011 to use the country's vast clean sources efficiently and support its development, Turkey's currently running feed-in-tariff program Renewable Energy Support Mechanism (YEKDEM) offers a feed-in tariff of $0.073 per kilowatt-hour (kWh) for wind and hydropower projects, $0.105 for geothermal facilities and $0.133 for solar energy and biomass geothermal plants.
However, it will expire at the end of this year. The new program will also apply feed-in tariffs although the figures will be different, especially for solar and wind power plants, Bayraktar explained without revealing further details as to the pricing mechanism. Therefore, the local and foreign investors in the Turkish renewable energy sector are expecting the announcement of a new scheme.
Bayraktar hailed the transformation of the Turkish energy market over the last 10 years and said: "I call this Transition 1.0. We successfully completed that. It was a pure change of market structure from a vertically integrated market model, with state-owned enterprises privatized and a market model that turned into a functioning competitive market. Therefore, this was a big change, a painful change. But the government took the initiative and showed real commitment to it."
He also remarked the second phase of the production began with the launch of the National Energy and Mining Policy in April 2017, which he described as a very comprehensive policy document.
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