Turkey submitted its Intended National Determined Contribution (INDC) in September 2015, just a couple of months before hosting the G20 Summit in Antalya.
The submitted INDC includes a greenhouse gas reduction decrease of up to 21% from business-as-usual (BAU) in 2030 (including LULUCF).
This means Turkey set itself a target that would allow it to increase emissions by 110% compared to its 2012 emissions!
In its 2023 energy vision, Turkey aims to quadruple its coal-fired energy generation capacity! If Turkey implements its pro-coal plans it is hard to see how Turkey’s emission could peak any time before 2030. It is therefore not surprising that Turkey’s INDC does not include an emissions peak date.
Instead Turkey’s BAU scenario is based on a high-economic-growth scenario which projects a 162% increase in emissions compared to 2012 levels. Based on this high growth scenario, Turkey’s CO2 emissions, which were 363 Mt in 2013, will reach 851 Mt by 2030.
Turkey’s INDC is also woefully insufficient in terms of growing its solar and wind energy. It reduced its wind energy target from 20 GW in its 2023 National Renewable Energy Action Plan to 16 GW in its 2030 INDC! Its solar target aims to only double its solar capacity to 10 GW in 2030, despite Turkey’s very large solar potential.
Turkey is instead counting on fully exploiting its hydro energy capacity (see here) despite the fact that hydro projects have been causing major damage for the ecology and livelihoods of local communities.
Turkey, an emerging market with relatively lower historical emissions aims to champion the high-emitters’ league by 2030!
By 2030 Turkey will be one of the World’s five major emitters if its emission growth rates continue at current levels. In 2015 Turkey’s emissions grew 110.4%. This is more than any other Annex I country! Turkey ranks first in terms of GHG emissions growth among the Annex I countries since 2006, see here.
CAN Europe calls on Turkey to revise its INDC before 2018 taking into account the Paris Agreement to hold the temperature increase well below 2°C and furthermore to pursue efforts to limit it to 1.5°C.
Turkey competes to host COP26 in 2020. It better gets its climate commitment in order well ahead of this meeting. As an emerging economy with a very extensive solar potential, Turkey must immediately drop its plans to increase its coal-fired energy production and develop an energy vision which puts people and the climate first.
