The share of renewable energy sources in Turkey's installed electricity capacity reached 45.2% in 2019, compared with 44.7% in 2018, according to the Turkish Energy Market Regulatory Authority's (EMRA) latest report.
The EMRA's Electricity Market Report 2019 showed that Turkey's licensed installed capacity increased 2.1% to 84,957 megawatts last year. Natural gas got the lion’s share at 30.5%, followed by hydroelectricity with 24.3%, lignite with 11.9% and imported coal with 10.6%.
Licensed electricity production saw a decline of 0.6% to 294,251 gigawatt-hours. Nearly 30.2% of licensed electricity production came from hydraulic plants, while imported coal, natural gas and lignite plants followed with 20.5%, 19.2% and 15.9%, respectively.
The country's share in renewable sources in electricity production also posted a considerable increase, from 30.7% in 2018 to 42.1% in 2019.
Turkey's unlicensed installed capacity also scaled up by 18.8% to 6,309 megawatts, with 92.3% of this capacity coming from solar power plants. Unlicensed power production rose by 19.7% compared with 2018 and reached 9,829 gigawatt-hours.
Local and renewable resources continued to increase their share in the electricity generation this year, too. The country produced 66% of its electricity from renewable resources in the first five months, said Energy and Natural Resources Minister Fatih Dönmez said last week.
Turkey looks to fully utilize local and renewable energy resources efficiently to support its development and to reduce dependence on energy imports. Last year Turkey's electricity production from local and renewable resources stood at 62%, Dönmez noted.
On May 24, Turkey saw an all-time daily record as local and renewable resources accounted for 90% of the country's electricity generation, the minister added.
The minister also detailed the share of each resource out of the 66% total: 34.3% was generated from hydroelectricity, 13.8% from local coal, 8.8% from wind, 3.6% from geothermal, 3.5% from solar, 1.8% from biomass and 0.2% from other sources.
On May 24, hydro plants constituted the largest portion at 43.7%, while local coal plants contributed 16.5% to electricity generation. Wind plants powered 14.5% and solar plants constituted 7.2%. Geothermal and biomass plants added 5.3% and 2.6%, respectively.
Dönmez recently said around 70% of Turkey's additional capacity over the last five years had come from domestic and renewable energy resources.
In just over a decade, Turkey has tripled its installed renewable capacity to around 45,000 megawatts and invested nearly $40 billion in renewable energy projects. Turkey ranks sixth in Europe and 13th in the world in terms of renewable capacity.
Meanwhile, Turkey's electricity imports decreased by 10.3% to 2.2 terawatt-hours. Of these imports, 88.7% came from Bulgaria, 11.2% from Georgia and 0.2% from Greece.
Turkey's electricity exports also showed a 9.3% fall to 2.8 terawatt-hours. Across the year, Turkey exported 95.7% to Greece and 4.3% to Bulgaria and Georgia.