Greetings to you all from Turkey! In my last article, I talked about the kinds of sources that my country use in order to produce energy such as electricity. However, in that article I was only able talk mostly about the fossil fuels. As such, in this article I will try my best to inform you all about the potential of my country by meanings of renewable energy, in spite of the fact that, sadly, do not benefit much from them as I have also explained in my previous article.

Despite of using hydroelectricity as much as we can, today only approximately 15% of our installed power comes from renewable energy sources, according to the statistics of the Ministry of Energy and Natural Resources in 2014. As I believe that I have explained hydroelectricity which covers 10% of this total number in my last article thoroughly, I will be skipping that and moving on with Turkey?s solar energy production and capacity. Turkey is actually a great place to benefit from solar energy due to its climate as well as geographical position. As such it is estimated that Turkey?s average global solar radiation is 1,500 kWh/m² a year. Now this number may not give you an idea of how big it is, so let me explain further this way: this energy is enough to provide electricity for all of Istanbul which is the biggest and most crowded city in Turkey with 14.1 million people in it for 40 years!  And this number is just an average meaning there areas in Turkey, especially in the south-east, where you can harvest up to 2,000 kWh/m² a year. From a perspective of the area needed for producing energy, according to IMF (International Monetary Foundation) in order for Turkey to produce all of its needed electricity in 2020, it will  need solar panels that cover an area 2.5 times the area of Istanbul. All these statistics aside, let?s come to the biggest question: How much are we using it? The answer, unfortunately, is 350 mW/year which is almost one million of the whole potential. In other words, despite its obvious potential, Turkey does not produce solar energy.

Another source of energy is the wind. The Eastern part of Turkey is under the influence of different pressure points both in the summer and winter which causes there to be winds all the time, making it the best place to build wind turbines. Other parts of the Turkey are also affected by these pressure points, however, not as much as Aegean Region. It is estimated that the capacity of wind energy is Turkey is 200 – 400 TWh. However, only 35 – 70 TWh of the total is possible to be harvested due to both economical and roughness of the land. Despite this reduction, wind capacity is a thousand times more than the average global radiation of Turkey, meaning our wind capacity is more than our solar capacity. Then again we are not using it to the fullest. According to the statistics, Turkey produced only 1.8 GW of electricity from wind turbines in 2011. In spite of expanding the usage of wind turbines by 8.9 % in the last year which is a tremendous increase, the desired level of installed capacity is still not reached and a big share of the economic potential has still not been used.

Consequently, my country has potential for renewable energy more than enough to reach the demands of the whole country. However, backing up this idea with legislations and economic aid is something that our government lacks to do. Aside from solar and wind, Turkey also has a potential for geothermal and biomass energy, but I will be informing you guys about those in my upcoming articles.