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Minister: Turkey will offer incentives to power plants that use locally produced coal

Alparslan Bayraktar, the Energy Minister, said that Turkey will launch a programme of incentives on electricity purchase guarantee for power plants that use locally produced coal.

Bayraktar, speaking at a coal mine in western Turkey said that the program would start this month. The incentives will apply to local coal plants up until 2030. He added that the state would buy 60% of the electricity generated in the mine at a stable rate for hard currency.

Bayraktar stated that Turkey's installed coal-based electricity generation capacity is 7,500 MW, out of a total 120,000 installed capacity.

As of June 30, these power plants accounted for 12% of all electricity generated. The government views coal power plants as critical to energy security and employment in the mining industry.

As part of the programme, we also provide incentives to coal plants that are newly constructed. Bayraktar stated that they were working on an "purchase guarantee scheme" which would run until 2045.

We will therefore increase our energy output from domestic coal and coal production, by increasing our installed capacity and replacing the old power plants which will be decommissioned. This will reduce our dependency on foreign sources.

Turkey, Europe's largest polluter of carbon emissions from coal-fired electricity production, has committed to gradually reduce its CO2 emissions to zero by the year 2053.

Nevertheless, coal was the largest source of electricity in Turkey last year. Analysts say that this is unlikely to be changing significantly anytime soon due to the strong demand for electricity. Can Sezer, Tuvan Gumrukcu and Gareth Jones edited this report.

(source: Reuters)