Turkcell to invest $240 mln in renewables

ISTANBUL

Türkiye’s leading mobile operator Turkcell plans to invest $240 million in renewable energy, said Murat Erkan, the company’s General Manager.

The company’s solar energy power plants with a total installed capacity of 300 MW will come online in the next three years, according to Erkan.

Turkcell aims to meet 65 percent of electricity Turkcell consumes from renewables in 2026, while the target is to reach 100 percent in 2030, Erkan said.

Turkcell Group presently generates 8 percent, or 74.4 GWh, of its consumption from renewable resources, he added.

Under the “Greensite” project, the company installs solar panels to power its cell towers.

“To date, we have saved around 680,000 KWh of electricity at those cell towers,” Erkan said.

Works on solar power projects which will have installed capacity of 57 MW by the end of 2023 are ongoing, Erkan said, adding that Turkcell aims to have 300 MW installed capacity by 2025 in solar power.

Turkcell operates an 18 MW wind power plant with six turbines in İzmir which produces enough electricity to power around 2,500 base stations, he noted.

Turkcell has saved around 131 GWh of power and 406 million Turkish Liras thanks to energy efficiency projects, according to the company executive.

Erkan was speaking at a press conference where he unveiled Turkcell’s financial results for the second quarter.

“We are revising upwards our guidance for 2023 due to the strong first-half performance,” he said.

The company expects its consolidates revenues to increase by 71 percent, while forecasts EBIDTA to be around 37 billion liras.

In the second quarter, Turkcell’s net income rose 70 percent year-on-year to 3.16 billion liras, while revenues grew 73.5 percent to 21.65 billion liras. In the first half of 2023, the company’s net income and revenues increased by 125 percent and 68 percent to 5.98 billion liras and 38.9 billion liras, respectively.

The company’s subscriber base increased by 234,000 quarterly net additions to have a total of 42 million subscribers.