Mediterranean Action Plan

III. NATIONAL STUDY
1. The Country’s Energy Situation
TURKEY - National Study
1.1 Share of t he Energy S ecto r and Insti tu ti onal Specificities
Turkey is situated at the meeting point of three continents (Asia, Europe and Africa) and
stands as a bridge between Asia and Europe. The country is located in south-eastern Europe
and south-western Asia. Its size is 779,452 km 2 . Turkey‟s population was 70,712,000 in 2003
(Table 7) [3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10].
Because of social and economic development of the country, the demand for energy and
particularly for electricity is growing rapidly. The main indigenous energy resources are
hydro, mainly in the eastern part of the country, and lignite. Turkey has no big oil and gas
reserves. Almost all oil and natural gas (NG) is imported, as is high quality coal. Turkey also
has a large potential for renewable energies. In Turkey, electricity is produced by thermal
power plants (TPPs), consuming coal, lignite, NG, fuel oil and geothermal energy, and
hydropower plants (HPPs).
Table 7 Energy profile of Turkey in 2003 [3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10]
The Turkish government has developed an energy policy aimed at diversifying energy
sources and suppliers and attracting private capital. Special attention in the government‟s
energy policy is paid to the development of international cooperation. Turkey has developed
and implemented several energy efficiency projects, aiming to increase energy efficiency in
the industry, transport and residential sectors. The relationship among the primary energy
consumption, Gross Domestic Product (GDP), population, electricity production and
consumption in Turkey has been given in Table 8 [11,12]. As shown in the Table, during the
last 10 years, while population increased 1.92%, GDP and Total Primary Energy
Consumption increased 3.03 and 3.38, respectively. Net Electricity Consumption, Net
Electricity Production and Gross Electricity Production increased about 10% during the same
period.
585