A new project approved by the Board of the World Bank will help increase the use of renewable energy in public facilities in Türkiye.

The $549 million Public and Municipal Renewable Energy Project will support Türkiye to scale-up renewable energy use in the public sector by focusing on central government and municipal facilities.

“Renewable energy for public facilities can help mitigate the impact of rising energy prices on municipal energy bills, while helping Türkiye deliver on its climate commitments,” said Humberto Lopez, World Bank Country Director for Türkiye. “The Project will bring many benefits to the economy and the environment as the building sector is one of the largest energy consuming and carbon emitting sectors in the country which has direct impact on the health of the citizens.”

Türkiye is endowed with considerable renewable energy resources, including solar, wind and geothermal. While renewable energy constitutes about half of total installed capacity and 45% of Türkiye’s power generation, more needs to be done to decarbonize the power sector.

See related article: World Bank Approves $450 Million for a Greener and Industrial Sector in Turkiye

The Project will contribute to expanding the distributed RE market in public facilities by directly addressing the lack of budgetary resources to finance capital investments and by putting in place implementation modalities to tackle the limited technical and implementation capacity to execute RE projects. This will help demonstrate leadership in the public sector to use sustainable energy solutions to deliver on the country’s climate mitigation commitments and to enhance energy security. The Project will also support pilots to demonstrate the combination of distributed RE with electrification of heating through heat pumps, which is critical for the decarbonization of the building sector.

“Scaling up renewable energy has been at the core of Türkiye’s development policies and will continue to play a critical role in meeting the country’s net zero emission targets,” said Almudena Mateos Merino and Manuel Jose Millan Sanchez, Senior Energy Specialists and Task Team leaders of the project. “Citizens will have an additional benefit from the RE investments by the central government and municipalities as budgetary resources saved from energy bills could be deployed to enhance other priority services for them.”

The project is aligned with Türkiye’s Country Partnership Framework for the FY18-23, which focuses on the three strategic areas of growth, inclusion, and sustainability.