The world needs to "rethink" and "redesign" its energy infrastructure in response to the climate crisis, requiring massive financial resources, Turkish Energy and Natural Resources Minister Alparslan Bayraktar said Friday, warning that public funding alone cannot meet the challenge.
Türkiye is the host of this year's U.N. climate summit, COP31, during which it has said it will seek to deliver a historic action plan with concrete solutions to the climate crisis, with a particular focus on financing.
"Floods, droughts, wildfires, and storms around the world are disrupting electricity transmission and distribution. Due to global warming and climate change, we must rethink, redesign, and strengthen our electricity infrastructure," Bayraktar told the Istanbul Climate Finance Summit.
The infrastructure built today must be designed to withstand the climate conditions of the next 10 years, he said. This, however, will require enormous financial resources, and public funding alone will not be enough, Bayraktar cautioned.
"We need to mobilize private capital, international financial institutions, development banks and long-term institutional investors," he said. "We need financing mechanisms that reduce risk, lower the cost of capital, and make investments in clean energy and climate-resilient infrastructure commercially viable."
Access to affordable, long-term climate finance is of vital importance, particularly for developing economies like Türkiye, Bayraktar said, warning that the global energy transition would not succeed if financing remained expensive or inaccessible in countries where energy demand and investment needs were growing fastest.
"An energy transition on an unprecedented scale lies ahead. In Türkiye alone, infrastructure requires at least $80 billion in investment through 2035," said Bayraktar.
The transformation is not just about the environment, according to the minister. "It is also an agenda for energy security, economic development, and industrial competitiveness,” he said.
The long-established consensus among the world's scientists is that climate change is real, mostly caused by humans, and getting worse. Its main cause is greenhouse gas emissions from burning fossil fuels like coal, oil and gas, which trap heat in the atmosphere.
According to Bayraktar, Türkiye's energy transition focuses on three goals simultaneously: securing energy supply, reducing dependence on imported energy and meeting the country's climate commitments, including its 2053 net-zero emissions target.
None of these objectives can be considered independent from one another, he said. And under today’s conditions, achieving these simultaneously has become more challenging than ever.
Drawing attention to the challenges experienced worldwide in recent years, Bayraktar pointed to serious pressures in the global oil and natural gas markets.
"Energy prices have risen significantly. Natural gas prices in Europe have once again reached their highest levels in recent years," he said.
This, Bayraktar said, reminds the world once again of a fundamental truth: "Energy security has not fallen off the agenda alongside the energy transition. On the contrary, energy security and the energy transition must move forward hand in hand."
For Türkiye, the key to this is "electrification," Bayraktar said.
Renewable energy will remain at the center of Türkiye's energy transition, the minister said, pointing to the country's potential in solar, wind, hydropower and geothermal resources.
"We are rapidly increasing our installed renewable capacity, while also building an electrical infrastructure capable of integrating much higher volumes of variable renewable generation into the grid," he noted.
Energy efficiency should also be treated as a strategic energy resource, Bayraktar said.
Türkiye's 2024-2030 National Energy Efficiency Action Plan envisages more than $20 billion in investment across industry, buildings, transport, agriculture and energy.
Türkiye also plans to prepare a third national energy efficiency action plan with more ambitious targets for the following decade, he added.
Nuclear power, meanwhile, will also be one of the indispensable components of Türkiye's carbon-free electricity generation portfolio, Bayraktar said.
"In an increasingly electrified economy, we view nuclear energy and renewable energy not as competitors, but as two complementary core components of a safe and clean energy system," he added.
Bayraktar said the transition in transport, along with the growing importance of battery storage, would further increase pressure on electricity infrastructure.
“Focusing only on generation investments is not enough,” he said. Focusing solely on generation investments is not enough. We need very large-scale investments in both transmission and distribution grids. Our electricity grids need to become larger, more powerful, smarter, and more flexible," he noted.
Bayraktar also highlighted the strategic importance of critical minerals needed for transmission lines and batteries.
“Just as there was a ‘gold rush’ in the 1800s, there is a global race for critical minerals today. Countries that cannot access these minerals will fall behind in many areas, from renewable energy to data centers, and from artificial intelligence to the industries of the future," he said.
"In short, the extraction of these minerals and the financing of mining projects are of strategic importance,” he noted.
