Coal & Climate Change 2016 Report

Coal & Climate Change 2016 Report

Increasing Dependency on Energy Imports

Climate and Energy Expert Önder Algedik recently released a new report: Coal and Climate Change 2016. According to report, Turkey’s high carbon policy has been increasing fossil fuel dependency as well as energy import dependency despite political discourse.

For the report, click here.

Coal import: six times of 90s!

The report analyses energy policies, investments and coal power plants. While Turkey is almost doubling its total coal consumption, coal import has reached a level in 2014 that is 6 times the level in 1990. Although Turkish government has been pushing local energy sources such as lignite, 41,5 million ton of 42,5 million ton coal consumption increase came from coal power plant mostly import coal. Coal import was 5.5 million tons in 1990 and increased approximately 6 times and reached 30,2 million tons in 2014.

Önder Algedik, author of the report, explains such dependency “ Import coal in power plant is a new issue emerging from 2002. 9 GW of new power plant capacity has commissioned since that time and almost 6 GW them are burning imported coal. While Turkey has been pronouncing lignite, we are seeing that more coal has been imported.”. The report clearly delivers Turkey’s high carbon market motivation by pushing local as well as import coal consumption.

Power and fuel projection of coal thermal plants of Turkey.

De-carbonization of Turkish economy; almost impossible

Turkey signed Paris Agreement on April 22nd with 175 countries and submitted INDC on October 2015. According to delivered INDC, Turkey’s emission in 2030 in 929 million ton which means 461 million ton more greenhouse gas compared to 2014 level. This increase is more than 261 million ton increase which is total increase between 1990 and 2014. Algedik says “ one of sixth of the total emission is coming from coal power plant, but candidate coal power projects would allocate half of total increase according to findings and our analysis. This shows that INDC of Turkey is prioritizing more fossil fuel especially natural gas and coal.”

Findings of the report:

  • The most critical player in Turkey’s greenhouse gas emissions is coal and natural gas. 167,2 million tons of the 259,8 million tons of emission increase between1990-2014 is caused by the carbon dioxide produced as the result of burning coal & natural gas.
  • The “energy need”, which is shown as the reason of those increases, in fact has the purpose of only increasing the production and consumption of fossil fuels. Therefore, the share of non-fossil fuel energy resources, which was 18,6% in 1990, decreased below 9,9% in 2014.
  • The determinative of the increase in the coal consumption is the thermal plants, which are responsible for 41,5 million tons of the 42,5 million tons increase between 1990-2014.
  • Thermal plants are being developed in double ways with domestic coal plants on one hand and imported coal plants on the other hand. While Turkey is almost doubling its total coal consumption, coal import has reached a level in 2014 that is 6 times the level in 1990.
  • Today, 59 plants are in operation in accordance with EMRA lists, and they have an installed power of 16 GW. Approximately 6 GW of the installed power consists of imported coal plants and is responsible for half of the emissions produced by electricity production and coal plants.
  • The thermal plants, which burn only coal emitted 22 million tons of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere in 1990, and this amount has reached 76 million tons in 2014. This amount will increase further with the units added after 2014.
  • 37 plants, which are licensed but none of their units are in operation, which obtained the preliminary license, or whose preliminary license application is under assessment, are included as candidates in EMRA lists. 14 of those candidate plants will burn lignite and asphaltite and the remaining 23 plants will import coal. When 2 projects, which have royalty contracts, are added to those plants, the power of candidate plants reaches 29,4 GW.
  • Turkey will add an installed power of 4 GW to burn its own coal and an installed power of 25 GW to burn the world’s coal as the result of its high-carbon policies.
  • Turkey’s coal plant development program is not limited only with the EMRA licensing processes. With the coal exploration works that it restarted in 2005, a new reserve of 7,2 billion tons was added. The existing and the newly found reserves are being developed by the state.
  • With the royalty model, 9 plants having a total power of 3GW was gained, two of them has not started the licensing process, yet. Furthermore, 5 areas are being developed by the state.

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