THE CONTROVERSIAL MISSION OF LIGNITE AS AN ACTOR IN NATIONAL ENERGY AND MINING POLICY


With its ever-growing energy demand, Turkey sets national targets to solve its dependence on other countries for energy as much as possible. In this regard, National Energy and Mining Policy targets were announced in March 2017. In line with these targets, Turkey, which has high external dependence for energy and has a yearly energy cost of approximately 55-60 billion dollars, aims to reduce its dependence with its own resources. At this point, a strategic mission is attributed to lignite. The remarkable target involving lignite in this policy is the approach of making use of domestic energy resources and mines within the country. However, despite the target of increasing the share of lignite as a domestic resource (encouraging lignite through application of additional tax to import coal in 2016/an additional tax of 15 dollars per ton for import coal), thermal plants operating based on natural gas and import coal are continuing to play an active role. The fact that import coal has a share of 17% in electricity production despite the incentives is about its cost efficiency and higher quality (high calorie-less smoke and ash). In this sense, the dominance of the private sector in the energy sector creates problems in terms of preferring lignite and making more use of it. Also, having a source of energy for a country does not mean that the resource will be used at maximum capacity. Because energy security includes sustainability as well as supply. At this stage, the mission undertaken lignite in Turkey's recent energy policy is controversial when evaluated in the context of energy security, sustainability (economic, environmental) and national energy policies.


Keywords


energy policies, lignite, national energy and nining policy, imported coal, private sector

Author : Muhammed ORAL -Ünal ÖZDEMİR
Number of pages: 883-902
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.29228/TurkishStudies.24999
Full text:
Share:
Alıntı Yap:
Atıf Sayısı: : 1
Turkish Studies-Economics,Finance,Politics
E-Mail Subscription

By subscribing to E-Newsletter, you can get the latest news to your e-mail.