Close cooperation with international financial institutions such as the World Bank is very important to achieve energy goals, a top official said Wednesday, also highlighting Türkiye's plans for increasing existing interconnection capacity with neighboring countries.
Türkiye seeks to ramp up cooperation with the World Bank on energy transition and clean energy projects, the Energy and Natural Resources Minister Alparslan Bayraktar said during a joint workshop with the bank held in Ankara.
In his opening remarks at the World Bank-Türkiye Energy Transition Workshop, Bayraktar expressed his country's readiness to collaborate with the World Bank and its private investment arm, International Finance Corporation (IFC), as well as other organizations to increase Türkiye's installed energy capacity, establish concrete targets and implement various projects.
Bayraktar underlined Türkiye's aim to ensure energy supply security and reduce dependency on imports and said that well-defined strategic steps need to be implemented and rigorously managed to ensure a successful energy transition.
He noted that renewable energy, hydrogen, natural gas and nuclear energy have an important role in energy transition.
In order to turn energy projects into actual investments, Bayraktar said the country needs to upgrade its electrical grid.
The country already "has plans to invest approximately $10 billion (TL 329 billion) in the next 10 years to improve and strengthen the country's transmission system," he added.
Bayraktar also said the country plans to increase its interconnection capacity with its neighbors.
"Currently, we have 700 megawatts (MW) of interconnection with Georgia, but we need to increase the existing capacities with our neighbors, including Bulgaria and Greece," he said.
Bayraktar also said that financing was one of the most important issues in moving forward with investments.
The country holds great promise in the energy sector, but most allocated capacities are awaiting permits; Bayraktar added that improvements are planned in the permit processes to shorten standby time.
Bayraktar added that they also aim to improve cooperation in the field of critical minerals and green hydrogen with the World Bank.
"At the World Bank Türkiye Energy Transformation Workshop, we met with World Bank managers and representatives of the energy sector," Bayraktar said separately in a post on X, formerly Twitter.
"We emphasized once again that we want to increase our renewable energy capacity, implement energy efficiency most effectively and strengthen the role of critical minerals in addition to nuclear energy, in line with our goal of becoming a carbon-neutral economy by 2053," he added.
World Bank Türkiye Country Director Humberto Lopez stated that Türkiye's energy transformation plan is "one of the biggest plans" the World Bank has seen and said, "We are extremely proud to support Türkiye in this regard because this shows Türkiye's goal and the capacity it has."