ISTANBUL
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Monday that Türkiye is leading in green energy investments, with the share of renewable energy in total energy capacity rising to over 60% as of this year.
Speaking at the 11th Energy Efficiency Forum and Exhibition in Istanbul, Erdogan emphasized that the world's energy needs are increasing year by year in parallel with the growing population and growing economy.
"Another point worth noting is that rising energy demand signals not only population growth and development, but also increased prosperity. Parallel to this increase in prosperity, the use of energy, especially electricity, is expanding," he said.
Erdogan noted that the government has been carrying out comprehensive projects to increase energy efficiency since 2002, and thanks to these projects, energy intensity has improved by 32%.
"We have reduced the amount of energy consumed per product and service by one-third. While the world improves energy intensity by an average of 1% annually, Türkiye has improved by 4.5%. We have become one of the countries that have increased energy efficiency most rapidly," he said.
"In the first eight months of this year alone, we paid $26 billion for energy imports. We are working diligently to reduce this bill," Erdogan said. "Our daily consumption of oil is around 1 million barrels. We procure 160,000 barrels of this from our own resources."
The president noted that even though Türkiye has made significant progress in its Black Sea gas and Gabar oil discoveries, the picture before it is that it still has "some distance" to go.
"We currently rank fifth in the world with four active drilling and two seismic-research vessels. With the entry of our new vessels into the inventory, we will rise to fourth place," Erdogan stated.
Nuclear energy front
Erdogan said the government is working to take the country to the next level in nuclear energy.
The Turkish president pointed out that there are 416 active reactors in 31 countries worldwide. He said: "These reactors produce approximately 9% of the world's electricity. Construction of 63 reactors is ongoing in 15 countries, including Türkiye. We will, God willing, provide the first electricity at the Akkuyu Nuclear Power Plant very soon. We have other nuclear power plant projects in addition to Akkuyu, and discussions on these are ongoing."
He said they discussed this issue with their counterparts during both their trip to China and their recent trip to the US, adding: "The Strategic Civil Nuclear Cooperation Memorandum of Understanding we signed with the US is an agreement based on cooperation in peaceful nuclear energy. This agreement envisions the development of next-generation technologies such as advanced reactor technologies and small modular reactors."
Energy and Turkish economy
Also touching on Türkiye's overall economy, Erdogan said they anticipate increasing the country's economy to $1.9 trillion and its per capita national income to $21,000 by 2028.
"We aim to increase our exports to $300 billion and tourism revenues to over $70 billion. We expect our population to exceed 88 million by 2030 and reach 94 million by 2050. We all know what this means for energy demand and consumption.
"Our natural gas consumption, which was 17.4 billion cubic meters in 2002, increased to 53.2 billion cubic meters in 2024. Our forecast for 2025 is 59.5 billion cubic meters," Erdogan said.