Turkey generated 120 billion kilowatts of electricity from renewable energy sources this year, saving $ 5 billion from imports of expensive energy sources.
Tanvir Arjumard, head of the Turkish Hydroelectric Power Plants Industry Businessmen's Association, said the country's renewable energy generation capacity has reached 49 gigawatts. Renewable energy production capacity has increased by 4.7 gigawatts this year with new energy projects. Currently, 50% of the 95 gigawatts of energy available in Turkey come from renewable energy sources. If renewable energy sources continue to grow at this rate, Turkey will soon become the world's largest producer of renewable energy.
Under President Erdoانan's leadership, the "Renewable Energy Support Scheme" was launched in 2011. Initially, wind energy and hydropower plants were installed under this scheme, which started generating electricity at a cost of 0.037 per kWh. Turkey is currently generating electricity from geothermal sources at 0.105 and solar and biomass plants at 0.133 per kW, all of whose machinery is locally manufactured in Turkey.
The scheme is coming to an end on December 31 this year but due to the global outbreak of Coronavirus, some plant machinery has not been delivered yet so the scheme has been extended till June 20, 2021.
According to the Turkish Ministry of Natural Resources, renewable energy sources have generated 4,200 megawatts of electricity in the first 11 months of this year.
The government now wants to convert the cost of energy from its new power projects into US dollars in local currency. The government is developing a new scheme that will involve local and foreign investors to launch new renewable energy projects in the country.
Turkey currently generates 25.7 gigawatts of electricity from oil and gas and 20.3 gigawatts from coal.
According to Tanvir Arjumard, the global Coronavirus epidemic has affected many sectors of the economy, but work on renewable energy projects continues and now Turkey is making rapid strides in this area.
He said that 77 billion kWh has been generated from hydropower plants, 24 billion kWh from wind plants, 11.5 billion kWh from solar energy, and 9 billion kWh from geothermal.
