An analysis of Turkish hydropower policy

Abstract

Over the last decade, Turkish electricity demand has increased more than 8% per annum as a result of economic development. Being one of the renewable energy sources par excellence, non-exhaustible, non-polluting and economically more attractive than other renewable sources, hydropower has turned out to be an important contributor to the future energy mix of the country. This paper deals with hydropower policies to meet increasing electricity demand for sustainable energy development in Turkey. Turkey has a total gross hydropower potential there will still be a huge hydro potential in Turkey. Besides, Turkey is a poor country in terms of fossil fuels (oil, natural gas, coal and so on) and has no nuclear power plant in operation, which strengthens the role of hydro energy among other alternatives.

Global Economic Crisis and the Politics of Diversity

“…While the scale of each effort is relatively small, the overall scale of the effort is massive, with over 1700 HEP facilities planned for Turkey's rivers over the coming decades. Among those around 350 projects are in operation and 1418 are at various planning stages (Erdogdu 2011), with the expectation that eventually 3 per cent of Turkey's total energy production will be provided by these run-of-river HEP facilities (Işlar 2012). Here, it is both the government's solvency and also the energy crisis that set the stage for this effort.…”

The Brazilian energy matrix: From a materials science and engineering perspective

“…An example of optimal dam is the run-of-the river unit, with no reservoir. To elucidate, power potential in operation/under construction (i) and estimated or in study (ii) of Brazilian rivers by region are [60]: Giant projects for tidal power generation are under consideration in several other countries: Canada, China, New Zealand, India, Russia, Turkey and the United Kingdom [61]. In the United States and Australia [62], focus is on smaller tidal facilities with different types of generators on streams.…”

A review of hydropower in Austria: Past, present and future development

“…It provides substantial contributions to achieve climate change objectives, to ensure energy supply and to establish a global sustainable energy system [3,[7][8][9][10]. However, compared with relatively new technologies, such as wind power or solar energy, hydropower capacity is quite strongly developed, especially in Europe.…”

“…A review of Austria's hydropower is particularly important for understanding current and future challenges in this field especially considering economic, energy-related, environmental and social aspects. On an international level such reviews were already done for Germany [27], Switzerland [28], Poland [29], Serbia [30], Turkey [7,9,[31][32][33][34][35][36][37], Greece [38,39], Spain [40], Portugal [41], Scotland [42,43], Kenya [44], Nigeria [45], Lesotho [46], Pakistan [47][48][49], Oman [50], India [51][52][53], Sri Lanka [54], Malaysia [55], Vietnam [56], China [14,[57][58][59][60], Nepal [61], Brazil [62], Costa Rica [63] and Australia [64] focusing on different thematic priorities. Additional reviews exist for Latin America [65], Europe in general [27,29,[66]…”