THE CARBON WAR

Chapter 4
Comrades in arms
Istanbul, 25 th & 26 th November 2013
Turkey has become a strategic front line in the carbon war. It is more perfectly
suited for a low-carbon energy future than most, yet its government
has embarked on a high-carbon energy plan that is the worst of its kind in the
world. Campaigners at the European Climate Foundation have invited me to go
to Istanbul to help them pluck what they hope will be some low hanging fruit.
Turkey’s plan is remarkable. The sun shines in this nation more than 7
hours per day on average, yet electricity generation from solar power is currently
almost non-existent. Installed solar photovoltaic capacity per inhabitant
is higher in freezing Finland. The national target is a mere 3 gigawatts by 2023,
about as much as the cloudy Britain’s current capacity. Yet with current low solar
costs, solar electricity would be the cheapest option in many settings around
the country, and in a few years in all of it. To meet 100% of Turkey’s projected
electricity in 2050 would need only 0.21% of Turkey’s land area, much of which
is not fit for other purposes anyway.
Yet in a nation dependent on foreign imports for three-quarters of its
energy, Turkey has declared 2012 the “Year of Coal”.
The plan, if that is the correct word for it, is to utilise the nation’s lignite
and hard coal resources by 2023 in more than 50 new coal plants. If all those
are built, Turkey’s greenhouse gas emissions would grow by 75%.
I spend a frantic couple of days with the European Climate Foundation’s
campaigners talking to banks about financing this madness, and plotting with
the Turkish solar industry and NGOs. This is one of the last half dozen or so
bolt holes around the world for the coal industry’s aspirations of survival.
Based on what I see and hear from worried bankers and an impressive
Turkish NGO movement, the Year of Coal plan won’t work. The bankers who
would have to bankroll the new coal plants fear stranding their loans. The NGOs,