The United Kingdom's Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy will provide support for a number of environmentally friendly projects in Turkey through its Climate Finance Accelerator (CFA) after sifting through 31 project applications. The CFA focuses on providing technical assistance to middle-income countries for low-carbon projects, and its Turkey leg launched on June 21 last year.

From the 31 applications, six innovative low-carbon projects were picked and will be supported in accessing finance from investors. The projects will receive capacity-building support in areas such as blending finance from public and private sources, developing financial models and preparing pitch material, according to a press release by the British Embassy in Ankara.

Ambassador Sir Dominick Chilcott in a written statement welcomed Turkey’s ratification of the Paris Agreement last year and Ankara’s commitment to reach net-zero emissions by 2053. "As the United Kingdom and under our ongoing COP26 Presidency, we appreciate Turkey’s timely involvement in global efforts under the Paris Agreement and we are ready to support Turkey during this process," Sir Chilcott said. He noted that a U.K.-Turkey Green Finance Conference was also scheduled for this year in London to support the development of a green finance ecosystem in Turkey.

The projects supported by CFA include an initiative to convert commercial spaces into data streaming sources to model and predict human behavior, in a bid to use those models to optimize buildings’ operations and sustainability, while another project involves converting fossil-fuelled buses so they run entirely on electricity using advanced technology. Also featured on the list are plans to expand the production capabilities of a solar module maker, Turkey's first car-sharing platform using only electric vehicles and a project setting out to increase the number of charging stations for electric vehicles.