THE IMPORTANCE OF RENEWABLE ENERGY SOURCES IN TURKEY

Year 2010, Volume: 2 Issue: 2, 23 - 30, 01.12.2010

Dilek Temız Aytac Gokmen

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.

Keywords

Energy, Renewable Energy Sources, Turkey

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