A short overview of energy production based CO₂ emissions and wind power development strategy for Turkey

ABSTRACT

Energy is one of the main sources of economical and social developments. Energy demand is increasing day by day on both the global and national scale of many countries. The current energy paradigm is based on fossil fuels but fossil energy sources decrease day by day and go through to a death point. While this process happens, fossil sources constitute the main source of carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions. At this point, the usage and spread of renewable energy sources is taking a place on the agenda of many countries.

Wind energy systems have a high learning curve value (92%) and when making a comparison between wind energy and other renewable energy systems according to cost and efficiency parameters wind energy systems are more preferable. At the end of 2010, global installed wind power was 194,390 MW and 250 million tones CO₂ emission was prevented with this installed power. The energy production paradigm of Turkey is based on thermal conventional technology. For that reason the CO₂ emission level increased 102% according to 1990s value in Turkey and energy production-based CO₂ emission ratio increaded to 92% in total CO₂ emission value.The theoretical wind energy potential of Turkey is 48,000 MW and nearly 62 million tones of CO₂ emission could be prevented with this potential.

The goals of this study are that, given information about global and national CO₂ emission levels, we can make some explanation about the national trend of the wind energy market and describe a convenient action plan for the Turkish wind energy market.

KEYWORDS:

• Carbon dioxide emission
• energy policy
• renewable energy
• wind energy
• wind power