Legislation to promote use of renewable energy

ISTANBUL

The Turkish government is ramping up efforts to boost the use of green energy and is preparing new legal regulations on providing incentives to help energy consumers switch to renewable resources.

Companies that generate energy from renewables, such as wind and solar power, are already entitled to get loans, but this time regulations, in line with European Green Deal, will be expanded to cover energy consumers.

A bill, which is currently being drafted, will include provisions on green energy.

The incentives for energy production from renewable sources were already published in the Official Gazette last month.

As part of the efforts to fight climate change, establishments will be able to secure loans at favorable conditions if they switch to renewable energy to undertake this green transformation.

Regulations, designed to make renewables more available, will allow not only large producers but also individual electricity producers to get connected to local grids in order to offer excess power they generate from solar and wind resources.

However, some infrastructure work will be needed to facilitate this.

The draft bill will include provisions that transmission companies will be responsible for undertaking the transformation work regarding grids.

Officials reckon that some planning will be needed, but this will not require a substantial overhaul of the electricity infrastructure, and only with a small additional cost attached, wind and solar power generation capacity of the country could be boosted six-fold.

If all goes according to plan, electricity generated from solar and wind power will meet up to 31 percent of the country’s consumption by 2026.

When added other renewables, 53 percent of power consumption needs could be met by renewable energy resources.

Turkey’s electricity consumption grew some 12 percent last year from 2020 to 327 billion kWh, while power generation was also up 12 percent to 329 billion kWh.