Turkey’s president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has called for coal-fired power plant operators to burn locally mined lignite rather than higher quality imported hard coal in a bid to reduce the country’s budget deficit. Mr Erdoğan estimates Turkey’s 2015 energy import bill at $38bn, while the IMF estimates the country’s 2015 budget deficit at $7.35bn (TL20bn).
Inaugurating a coal-fired plant in the southern province of Adana on 24 April, Mr Erdoğan told reporters that coal currently fuels 13% of Turkey’s electricity generation and that the country needs to invest $110bn to meet energy demand growth over the next 10 years. Turkey’s electricity generating capacity reached almost 70GW by the end of 2015. (CONTINUED - 384 WORDS)
