The Importance Of Renewable Energy Sources in Turkey

Abstract

Turkey is rapidly growing in terms of both its industrial production and population. Parallel to this, its demand for energy is amounting fast. Energy is one of Turkey's most important development preferences. Today, Turkey's energy necessity is fundamentally dependent on oil, natural gas, and electricity. On the other hand, Turkey's energy production meets only 30% of its total energy consumption and thereby is an energy importing country. On the other hand, Turkey has a large potential for renewable energies. The renewable sources in Turkey are solar, wind, biomass, hydro, solar and geothermal. Most of Turkey's production facilities are based on fossil fuels. However, every year, Turkey has to meet a great burden to meet the costs of importing fossil fules and the costs of the damages that occur in the environment by the utilization of fossil fules and their byproducts which is environmetal degredation. Besides, Turkey is an abundant country with respect to renewable energy sources and could benefit considerably by the utilization of this green type enrgy. Moreover, the implementation of renewable energy technologies can lower the current national and global environmental problems as well as secure energy necessities of Turkey associated with the production and use of fossil energies. Therefore, the objective of this study is to present the energy situation and potential of the renewable energy sources in Turkey as well as associate these factors with the environmental issues.