Some $20 bln to be invested in energy efficiency: Minister

ANKARA

Türkiye’s public and private sectors will make energy efficiency investments worth a total of $20 billion by 2030, Energy and Natural Resources Minister Alparslan Bayraktar has said.

Speaking at the launch of “Türkiye’s 2030 Energy Efficiency Strategy and Action Plan,” Bayraktar noted that when the action plan is implemented the country’s energy consumption will decline by 16 percent and that 100 million tons of emissions will be prevented by 2030.

"With the investments we will make, we will save energy worth $46 billion dollars by 2040," he said.

The new energy efficiency initiative is designed to boost energy supply security and to reduce the country’s dependence on foreign energy resources, he said, adding that those efforts are in line with the country’s sustainable and environment-friendly policies.

They will invest $700 million to save 30 percent of energy in public buildings by 2030, Bayraktar noted.

Over $3 billion worth of investments will be also undertaken by 2030 to make existing residences, new buildings and areas undergoing urban transformation more efficient, Bayraktar said, noting that some 61 actions will be taken under the new efficiency policy.

The necessary charging stations and other infrastructure will be put in service to meet the demand for 1 million electric vehicles that will be on the roads by 2023, according to the minister.

“We will expand the use of renewable energy as well as the energy-efficient heating and cooling ventilation…We will prevent heat losses in agricultural production and warehouses and greenhouses.”

The targets, which were set out in the first National Energy Efficiency Action Plan covering the period of 2017-2023, were met, Bayraktar said.

“Thanks to the efforts focused on power generation to consumption, our primary energy consumption was 14 percent less.”

During the implementation of the first action plan, investments amounted to $8.5 billion, and emissions were reduced by around 70 million tons, he said. “We also created 45,000 green jobs.”

Türkiye was one of the two countries that improved its energy intensity the most in the world for two consecutive years in 2021 and 2022, according to the minister.

“While the global energy intensity improvement in 2022 was 2 percent on average, our country's energy intensity showed a record development of 6.2 percent,” he said.