Türkiye

The 7th National Communication has again provided two scenarios: a Business-As-Usual Scenario and a “With Measures Scenario”. Compared to historical trends, both scenarios are based on GDP elasticities significantly higher than historical ones. GDP forecasts reported in the projections are also significantly higher than recent GDP assumptions (IMF, 2018; PWC, 2017). The CAT has decided to apply more recent GDP growth estimates and we have adjusted the GDP elasticity in our projections.

With currently implemented policies and adjusted GDP assumptions, Turkey is expected to achieve emissions levels of 792–914 MtCO₂e in 2030 (excluding LULUCF). The upper-bound projections for the current policies scenario are based on the “with measures” scenario including a nuclear target for 2025.

The lower-bound projections for the current policy scenario are based on historical trends of GDP elasticity of energy and industry GHG emissions between 1990 and 2017 with adjusted GDP on more recent growth estimates (IMF, 2018; PWC, 2017), see assumptions section for more details in the calculations.

Our current policy projections show that Turkey is expected to overachieve its INDC target.

The National Climate Change Strategy (2010-2023), National Climate Change Action Plan (2011-2023) and the 10th Development Plan (2014-2018) provide the basis for most of Turkey’s climate change policies and measures. The 11th Development Plan, expected in late 2017, has now been published (July 2019), and focuses mainly on energy security rather than decarbonisation (Government of Turkey, 2019; Scaling-Up Turkey, forthcoming).

Economic arguments set strong incentives for Turkey to prioritise renewables to secure its energy supply. The ongoing reduction in the costs of renewable energy technology and storage mean that reliable power can be obtained cost-effectively without resorting to coal-powered generation. Turkey has a target of reaching a renewable energy share of 38.8% by 2023 and has in place various support programmes for the development of renewable energy, including an auction process with competitive prices for the renewable energy sector (Scaling-Up Turkey, forthcoming).

Combined with the large co-benefits of reduced air pollution from fossil fuel use, as well as projected economic damages from climate change, this raises questions about the impact of the suggested pathway on future economic development in Turkey, which is still considering domestic lignite coal as the most important source of substitution for reducing the dependency of natural gas (Scaling-Up Turkey, forthcoming)

The uncertainties and risks around nuclear construction make the technology unreliable in terms of planning the necessary power system decarbonisation, which needs to happen globally by 2050 (IPCC, 2018). See more details in the “Nuclear” section.

It makes more sense – on environmental, economic, energy security and social grounds – for Turkey’s energy investments to focus more on renewables.

Coal

Turkey continues to plan on meeting its increased energy demand, which is expected to increase by 4% to 6% annually (Erdin & Ozkaya, 2019), by building new coal-fired power plants (Istanbul Policy Center, 2016). One of the goals in Turkey’s Strategic Plan 2015–2019 is to increase the annual electricity generation from domestic coal by 54% above 2012 levels by 2019 (Ministry of Energy and Natural Resources, 2016).

2018 saw Turkey breaking its record in domestic coal production, which reached 101.5 million tonnes (Anadolu Agency, 2019a), while in May 2019 the Ministry of Energy and Natural Resources announced forthcoming tenders for coal mines acquisition (Ahval, 2019b).

In 2018, two new power plants in Turkey (Yumus Emre and Çan-2) started operations and the Soma Kolin Power Plant totalling 1.2 GW of additional capacity started to operate in June 2019 while the long-delayed 1.3 GW Hunutlu thermal power recently started the construction of the plant despite difficulties in obtaining permit as it is located in a biological preservation zone (Global Coal Plant Tracker | End Coal, 2019; Global Construction Review, 2019).

The government is continuing to press for a large expansion in coal power with close to 34 GW of planned power plants (announced, pre-permitted and permitted) (CoalSwarm, 2019). This stands in strong contrast to the global need to reduce the use of coal in electricity by two-thirds over 2020-2030 and to zero by 2050 (IPCC, 2018). Apart from the impact on emissions, this would add severe stress to already drought-prone regions, increasing the threat to water demand, by adding competition with other water users.

Of particular concern are the plans to build a 5 GW lignite power plant in Konya Karapinar. Sinking water levels would be damaging for agriculture in the region and threaten the livelihood and access to fresh water for 60,000 people (TEMA, 2013). Even those plants planned in the vicinity of the coast would still use significant amounts of fresh water for scrubbing air pollutants, thus raising water demand in the region. There is also always a risk of thermal pollution when using seawater for cooling (Greenpeace, 2016) and no measures appear to have been put in place to mitigate this.

Strong protests have taken place in Turkey for years as population concerns about impacts on health and ecology rose, leading to two successful cases in 2019 with the Turkish Supreme Court cancelling the 1.3 GW project in Amasra district following the cancelation of the coal-based thermal power plant in Tekirdag (350.org, 2019; Climate Home News, 2019).

Nuclear

Turkey is also embarking on nuclear power plant production. Having no nuclear power at the moment, the Energy and Natural Resources Minister announced that between 2023 and 2030 Turkey will put three nuclear power plants into operation, expected to meet 10% of the country-wide electricity consumption (Daily Sabah, 2017).

For the first one, the Turkish government awarded a contract to the Russian company Rosatom to commission a 4-unit, 4.8 GW nuclear power plant by 2025 (World Nuclear Association, 2017a). Construction of the first 1200 MW block in Akkuyu - Unit 1 - started in 2018 and is on track to start operation in 2023. While the completion of the foundation for the plant has been recently announced (World Nuclear News, 2019), the company has also begun working on the plans for Unit 2 and expects to receive a construction licence this year (World Nuclear News, 2019).

In May 2013 Turkey signed an intergovernmental agreement with Japan for the second plant, the 4,480 MW Nuclear Power Plant in Sinop, northern Turkey also in an earthquake zone, but Japan pulled out in December 2018, citing construction delays and rising costs (Daily Sabah, 2019c). Despite the persistent incertitude regarding the effective implementation of the project (Ahval, 2019a), the government reaffirmed recently its objective of resuming the project, partners and funders need however to be defined (Daily Sabah, 2019a).

While this can decrease the emissions intensity of the Turkish power system, in June 2017 European Parliament called on the Turkish government to halt its plans for the construction of the Akkuyu nuclear plant, pointing to the risks of severe earthquakes in that region (European Parliament, 2017), an issue that has also been raised by some environmental organisations (Environmental Justice Atlas, 2017; Reuters, 2011).

These concerns were then reiterated in the resolution adopted at the October Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. The assembly expressed its “deep concern regarding the construction in an earthquake-prone region and asks the Turkish Government to join the Espoo Convention and to take into account all concerns expressed also by its own citizens” (PACE, 2018). The European Parliament voted against the plant in March 2019 (TRT World, 2019).

In addition, the guaranteed rate of 123.5 USD/MWh for 70% of the energy generated in the first nuclear power plant (World Nuclear Association, 2017b) is already above the cost of recent tenders outcomes for large-scale PV and wind installations resulting in offers well below existing feed-in tariffs (e.g. USD 34.8 USD/MWh for wind and USD 69.9 / MWh (Scaling-Up Turkey, forthcoming) and for many wind and solar energy sources (IRENA, 2017), and is likely to be significantly more expensive than these alternatives in the mid and late 2020s, when the nuclear power plants are scheduled to go online.

Renewables

Turkey’s 2014 National Renewable Energy Action Plan (NREAP) targeted an increase in renewable power capacity from 25.5 GW in 2013 to 61 GW in 2023. Its trajectory set out a gradual rise in renewables from 13.5% in 2012 to 15.3% in 2015 and 20.5% in 2023 (The Republic of Turkey, 2014). With 5 GW of solar installed capacity recorded in 2018, Turkey has already overachieved its target of 5 GW of solar energy by 2023 (IRENA, 2019b) (Scaling-Up Turkey) and, in the recently published 11th Development Plan (July 2019), the government increased its target of 38.8% of renewable energy share by 2023 (Government of Turkey, 2019), there are, however, no targets beyond 2023.

In 2016, the government introduced the Renewable Energy Resource Areas (YEKA) strategy, a tender process to procure the production of renewable energy on ‘Renewable Energy Designated Areas,’ (REDAs) which are deemed most suitable for energy generation and the first auctions were awarded for a Solar PV plant in March 2017 and for a Wind onshore plant in August 2017 (Sarı, Saygın, & Lucas, 2019). A third wind onshore auction (1 GW) has recently (May 2019) been awarded to the German-Turkish consortia (Enercon-Enerjisa) (Daily Sabah, 2019b). Prices of recent auctions show a very competitive renewable energy sector compared to fossil-fuel energy prices and guaranteed nuclear energy prices and installation costs solar photovoltaic are among the lowest in the world in Turkey (Scaling-Up Turkey, forthcoming; IRENA, 2019c).

The process requires developers to include domestic businesses, establish domestic factories, create employment for the local labour force and invest in R&D. The first 1GW wind onshore awarded auction to the consortium Siemens Gamesa – Türkerler - Kalyon announced to have chosen the location of the turbine factory to be built (in the Aegean city of İzmir) and should be completed by end of this year (IZKA, 2019).

While the 2017 auctioning process was successful, the 1.2 GW off-shore wind auction initially announced for June 2018 has been postponed to 2019 at the earliest. This was followed by the cancellation of the second solar PV YEKA auction, originally planned for January 2019. So even though the Ministry of Energy and Natural Resources has new plans for an additional 10 GW of solar PV and 10 GW of wind capacity to be installed in the coming decade (Sarı et al., 2019), if the delays for renewables experienced so far were to continue, we are not confident this timeline will be met. On the positive side, if Turkey were to achieve its plan to increase its installed capacity in wind and solar energy by almost 21 GW by 2024, it will be among the top five countries in Europe’s for the amount of renewable energy (Anadolu Agency, 2019b).

At the same time the 2.8 GW of projects that received preliminary licenses at the end of 2017 remain unclear (WindPower Monthly, 2018). The YEKA Strategy intends to boost the renewable energy development industry through requiring the domestic production of renewable energy technologies and proportional requirements on domestic company ownership and labour force (British Chamber of Commerce Turkey, 2016). Local production requirements combined with the country’s unsteady economy seems to have destabilised the first solar PV awarded auction to the South-Korean-Turkish consortia (Hanwha Q Cells and Kalyon Enerji) which was supposed to start production end of 2018 and has not happened yet (PV-Magazine, 2019).

Gas

In 2013 the biggest share of Turkey’s total primary energy supply was natural gas with 43.8%. It plans to increase the use of domestic resources primarily (such as coal), and to reduce the share of natural gas in electricity generation to 38% in 2019 (Ministry of Energy and Natural Resources, 2015).

However, due to its strategic location and the increasing demand on Liquified Natural Gas (LNG) worldwide, Turkey is aiming to become a gas trading hub by developing its storage and regasification capacities : two new floating storage and regasification units (FSRU) planned by 2023 when the second FSRU was commissioned in January 2018 (DAILY SABAH, 2019). From January to June 2019, the country’s imports reached a record high and in 2018 LNG imports represented 22.5% of total gas purchased (Daily Sabah, 2019d).

However, the CAT cautioned in June 2017 that natural gas has a limited role to play as a bridging fuel in the power sector and runs the risk of overshooting the Paris Agreement long-term temperature goal - or creating stranded assets (Climate Action Tracker, 2017).

Industrial process emissions account for around 14% of Turkey’s GHG emissions (excl. LULUCF) (Republic of Turkey Ministry of Environment and Urbanization, 2018a). Turkey aims to use a mix of targets and support schemes to improve energy efficiency in the industry sector. There are four main approaches envisaged in the National Energy Efficiency Plan.

First, the government aims to scale up cogeneration systems for large industrial enterprises with heat needs exceeding 20 MW. Each industry subsector will have to achieve a 10% reduction in energy intensity by 2023. Energy efficiency projects are to be supported by low-interest loans. The government also aims to harmonise the legislation of environment-friendly design and product labelling with EU standards.

Transport emissions account for around 18% of Turkey’s GHG emissions (excl. LULUCF) (Republic of Turkey Ministry of Environment and Urbanization, 2018b). The largest share of emissions comes from road transportation which have tripled between 1990 and 2017 (Scaling Up Turkey, forthcoming).

Turkey has a limited number of policies in place to reduce transport emissions. The 2014 National Renewable Energy Action Plan calls for a 10% share of renewable energy in the transport sector by 2023, and the National Climate Change Action Plan (2011–2023) calls for an increase of the share of rail in freight transportation of 15% and of 10% in passenger transportation. All new vehicles must comply with EURO 6 standards, but no fuel economy standards are in place. Certain government offices will be required to shift to EVs by 2021 (Finans Haberler, 2018).

The recently published 11th Development Plan provides a target of 10% of freight to be transported by rail by 2023 and an increase in modal share of rail in passenger transport to 3.8% (Government of Turkey, 2019). Turkey has a high vehicle registration tax compared to European countries, and increase with the engine size, incentivizing purchase of small engines, which however does not mean necessary lower emissions. Although taxes are lower, Electric Vehicles market share is still insignificant, less than 1% (Şenzeybek & Mock, 2019). On a positive note, Turkey aims at manufacturing its own electric vehicle (EV) by 2020, which, while helping the automotive industry competitiveness internationally, will be an important opportunity to boost EV sales in the country (Scaling-Up Turkey, forthcoming).

The 2018 Energy Efficiency Action sets out various measures to improve energy efficiency, and states that in 2019 a strategy for near zero-energy buildings will be developed. Published in September 2019, the Urban Transformation Plan aims at replacing old buildings in cities with sustainable living spaces (Scaling-Up Turkey, forthcoming). Energy efficiency measures are supported by the 11th Development Plan published in July 2019 through for example the implementation of energy efficiency in public buildings, promoting renovation of existing buildings and a certification system for green buildings (Government of Turkey, 2019; Scaling-Up Turkey, forthcoming).

During the UN SG Climate Summit, Turkey committed to the newly launched initiative on Zero Carbon Building for All, with a target to develop and implement policies to drive the decarbonisation of all new buildings by 2030 and all existing buildings by 2050. This stands in contrast with the need to reach fossil free and near zero-energy new buildings by 2020 to be 1.5°C pathway consistent (Zero Energy Buildings for All, 2019; Scaling-Up Turkey, forthcoming).

According to the 2019 National Inventory Report, Agriculture emissions in 2017 accounted for 12% of Turkey’s GHG emissions (excl. LULUCF). Turkey has an ambitious target for increasing agricultural productivity by 2023, aiming to be in the top five producers globally, suggesting we can expect a significant increase of GHG emissions in this sector. Currently, agricultural activities are the primary contributors of CH₄ and N₂O, 55.5% of CH₄ emissions and 77.6% of N₂O emissions original from agricultural activities (Republic of Turkey Ministry of Environment and Urbanization, 2018a). Although Turkey considers the Agriculture sector in its National Climate Change Action Plan (2011-2023), it does not seem to have a concrete target in place to reduce GHG emissions.

The LULUCF sector in Turkey is a net sink which has been increasing since 2008 and Turkey aims to increase its forest land to cover 30% of the country by 2023 (Republic of Turkey Ministry of Environment and Urbanization, 2018b), which has been reiterated in the recently published 11th development plan (Government of Turkey, 2019).

Over 90% of the waste generated in Turkey is sent to landfills (OECD, 2019). The European Environment Agency notes that an extraordinary effort is required by the government, local authorities and the private sector to ensure proper implementation of waste regulation (Bakas & Milios, 2013). In its third biennial report Turkey notes that the greatest mitigation is expected in the waste sector, through policies such as rehabilitation of unmanaged waste sites and recovery of methane gas from landfill gas (Republic of Turkey Ministry of Environment and Urbanization, 2018b).

There is an increasing effort on installing zero waste processes at the municipal level, particularly involving public buildings, shopping malls and hospitals. Public institutions are expected to have zero waste processes in place by June 2020 and Municipalities with population of more than 250 000 by December 2020. The Zero Waste project aims to reduce volume of non-recyclable waste. According to the latest National Development Plan, Turkey aims to recycle 35% of its municipal waste by 2023 (Government of Turkey, 2019; Ministry of Environment and Urbanization of Turkey, 2019).