Turkey’s clean energy generation facilities received nearly TL 3.9 billion ($570 million) in incentive payments in June under the Renewable Energy Support Scheme (YEKDEM), according to Turkey's Energy Exchange Istanbul (EXIST) data.
A total of 817 facilities, with an installed capacity of 21,049 megawatts (MW), received financial backing in June under the YEKDEM scheme. They produced about 6.17 million megawatt-hours (MWh) of electricity.
Turkey, which wants to fully utilize local and renewable energy sources to efficiently support its development, offers feed-in tariffs for renewable energy plants, including wind, hydropower, geothermal, biomass and solar, through this scheme.
Renewable energy plants under the scheme are granted incentives, the value of which is dependent on the type of renewable energy source in use.
The scheme, which was launched in 2011, supports wind and hydropower plants at $0.073 per kilowatt-hour (kWh), geothermal facilities at $0.105 kWh, and solar and biomass plants at $0.133 kWh. These figures can also vary slightly, depending on the use of locally-produced equipment in the plants.
Turkey plans to end this renewable incentive scheme by 2020 and is working on a more updated and efficient replacement.
The country produced 66% of its electricity from local and renewable resources in the first five months of 2020, Energy and Natural Resources Minister Fatih Dönmez recently said.
Last year, the country's electricity production from local and renewable resources stood at 62%. On May 24, it saw an all-time daily record as local and renewable resources accounted for 90% of the country's electricity generation.
In just over a decade, Turkey has tripled its installed renewable capacity to around 45,000 MW and invested nearly $40 billion in renewable energy projects. Turkey ranks sixth in Europe and 13th in the world in terms of renewable capacity.
