A few weeks ago, the European think tank Ember published an astonishing figure: Turkey has by far the largest battery storage capacities in Europe. While Germany has only 12 to 13 gigawatts, Turkey has more than 33 gigawatts of battery storage capacity.
Battery storage plays a key role in powering renewable energy. They store electricity from wind and solar energy, which can be fed into the grid when the wind is not blowing and the sun is not shining. Federal Minister for Economic Affairs Katherina Reiche (CDU) wants to bridge such periods in Germany primarily with — some of them new — gas-fired power plants. However, experts also call for much greater investments in storage and in expanding the power grids to transport green electricity to where it is needed.
Incredibly, the right-wing and economically liberal government of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is doing precisely that. “Two years ago, the Turkish government made decisions that led to massive investments in battery storage,” Ufuk Alparslan, Ember’s Turkish representative, told The Guardian. “If these storage capacities are actually all procured, the Turkish battery pipeline could become the backbone of a new clean regional energy hub.”
One of these political decisions was that solar power plants, which also have batteries available, may feed their electricity into the grid with priority. This has not only advanced the construction of battery storage facilities but solar energy in Turkey overall.
Progress in Solar Energy
For years, solar energy in Turkey had been grievously neglected. By 2010 the International Energy Agency estimated in its reports that Turkey would use only three percent of its enormous solar energy potential. This has changed in recent years. According to Ember, the share of solar energy in the electricity mix alone doubled from 6.7 percent to 13.4 percent between 2023 and 2025. For comparison: In Germany, it was 18 percent last year, according to the think tank Agora Energiewende.
The expansion of battery storage capacity and solar energy in Turkey is likely to continue swiftly, after all the Turkish government wants to showcase the expansion of its renewable energies at COP 31, the World Climate Conference to be held this November in Antalya, Turkey.
By 2035, the plan is to triple the capacity of solar and wind power from the current 40 gigawatts to 120 gigawatts. The dramatically falling prices for solar panels, battery storage, and the other equipment for renewable energies due to overproduction in China could be a game-changer for Turkey in clean energy.
It would also make Turkey independent from the expensive imports of fossil energy, but that is far from achieved. First, more than half of the electricity still comes from fossil energy. And second, the still most important pillar of renewable energy in Turkey is hydropower; in 2022 it accounted for a fifth of the power mix. There are a variety of dams, including 18 on the upper reaches of the Euphrates and Tigris.
According to the Ember report, the droughts of the past years have, however, led to electricity from hydropower falling by about 6 percent due to drastically reduced reservoir levels in the dams. Although this winter has seen above-average rainfall again, climate change is likely to cause hydropower plants to deliver less in the medium term. All of this must first be compensated by solar energy or wind power.
Nevertheless, No Farewell to Fossil Fuels
The Turkish government is not only betting on renewable energy but also on expanding climate-damaging coal-fired electricity generation. For that, predominantly the particularly dirty lignite is burned. Moreover, lignite open-pit mining is massively destroying ecologically valuable landscapes in the southwest of Turkey. Under strong resistance from the population, large-scale forests and olive groves are being cleared and whole villages displaced. Thus, the giant excavators can continue to devour ancient cultural landscapes. Since Turkey, besides oil and gas, still has to import coal, they want to reduce the share of imported coal.
The Guardian reports that an early draft of a COP 31 decision would not address the hotly debated worldwide phase-out of fossil fuels. Turkey is not an oil state, but it still does not want to let go of fossil fuels. In addition, Erdoğan is counting on nuclear power. In a few years, a reactor built by Russia on the Mediterranean is expected to deliver the first electricity, with two more reactors on the Black Sea planned.
Thus, Erdoğan is not prioritizing solar energy, but aiming for a mix of renewables, coal power, and nuclear power. Turkish environmentalists who want to organize a protest summit as a counter-design to COP 31 have little hope that the negotiations in Turkey will contribute to a global exit from fossil fuels.
