Afşin-Elbistan Coal Power Plants Report: Changing climate rather than producing electricity!
Climate and Energy Consultant and founder of 350Ankara.org, Önder Algedik has published a new report on Afşin- Elbistan coal reserve and power plants. The report analyses the role of Afşin-Elbistan reserve and explains role in changing climate rather than producing electricity.
In order to strengthen high carbon policy, Turkey has been looking for development of the new project on government-owned Afşin-Elbistan C, D and E sites while working on permission to other mine areas of the private sector for power plant investments. The report identifies problems of high carbon policies in the light of Afşin-Elbistan lignite reserve;
- In 2005, the exploration works have been re-started as a sign of the acceleration in the return of Turkey to coal use.
- As a consequence of exploration work, lignite reserve increased to 4,8 billion tons in the area. In other words, Afşin-Elbistan basin has one-third of the coal reserves of Turkey.
- Till 2015, Plant A and Plant B burned 405 million tons of coal in order to produce 173,3 million MWh electricity by emitting 200 million tons of carbon dioxide.
- Taking into consideration that the annual operation period of thermal plants is about 8000 hours, it is seen that the average operational period of 8 units of 2 plants is very low and has been 2422 hours in 2012.
The report also shows the difficulty of keeping the global temperature rise under 20C in case of burning remaining coal reserve. Although scientific reports show that 80% of worlds known reserve should stay in the ground, the report demonstrates that burning remaining reserve of Afşin-Elbistan area would cause emitting 2,4 billion tons of carbon dioxide.