Tag: energy source

  • Guest post: Turkey – resource poor?

    Guest post: Turkey – resource poor?

    The country in Europe with the most potential in renewable energy must establish a world-leading manufacturing base in the sector, writes Matthew Vogel of Alternatif Investments.

    Turkey energy

    The Turkish government’s goals for 2023, the centenary of the Republic, include several in the energy sector. With huge dependence on Russian gas and questions about the outlook for diversification (whether Azeri or Iranian gas would be more reliable is a question), the AK Government must exploit the country’s renewable energy resources, which are actually much greater than the 2023 targets, more than double.

    Meeting those targets alone would shave up to 1 per cent of GDP off the current account balance, not to mention the stable capital flows that could finance it. Because Turkey’s structural energy problem is so large and so widely understood, strategic and institutional investors would embrace a more open and fast-paced approach to investment in it.

    Turkey has the second biggest onshore wind and solar potential in Europe, and third biggest geothermal potential, but development has been slow. Despite several wind power licensing rounds in the past decade, the last in 2007, with a potential for close to 10GW of installed capacity, only 1.8GW have been installed so far. Indeed, the 10GW 2014 interim target for wind power in the energy ministry’s 2009 strategic plan is far out of reach.

    There are a number of issues to consider. As mentioned by the Global Wind Energy Council, Turkey’s main obstacles for development are its complex and bureaucratic administrative procedures. But there are other issues as well.

    Turkey’s industrial organisation is dominated by local oligarchic structures, where foreign strategic involvement is limited. The renewables sector is no different. Most licenses have ended up in the hands of non-strategic investors – many are a portfolio item for diversified holding companies or in the hands of smaller local concerns, without the expertise to develop sites or present bankable business plans, who are reluctant to collaborate with strategic partners. Licenses were sought as a “trade,” as if they were a security that could be flipped for a profit, before any thought of building a wind farm. The most basic of financial and technical analysis has not been undertaken on a large number of such licenses. A more aggressive approach by the government to facilitate a secondary market that allows the transfer of such licenses to committed renewable firms would be fruitful.

    The pending 2013 solar round may leave solar licenses in a similar state to wind licenses, despite some new pre-qualification measures. Local investors are expected to overwhelm the 2013 round’s relatively small 600MW license amount (Germany installed 7.5GW of solar last year alone). Small allocations would reduce the profitability of operations and their attractiveness for major strategic players.

    While low feed in tariffs are not the most important issue, they are generally the lowest in Europe and among the lowest in the world: 7.3 US cents per kilowatt hour for wind and 13.3 cents for solar and geothermal, with modest top ups for a complicated local content system. For better or worse, the wind FIT has been below the average market price for electricity over the past three years. Unlike many countries in Europe that are fiscally stretched, Turkey can afford some modest level of subsidies for such a strategic issue.

    With the European renewables sector facing a slowdown, this is a golden opportunity for Turkey to make its case. The authorities should encourage global renewables manufacturers to relocate to what should be a large market and export base. One only has to look at share prices to note the cost and demand pressures facing wind turbine and solar panel manufacturers in the US and Western Europe.

    It is worth noting that the Government has a goal of reaching 3 per cent of GDP in R&D spending, from less than 1 per cent of GDP presently (OECD average is 2.5 per cent). Large onshore operations of renewable energy companies would certainly nourish the R&D outlook. FDI into such a technology-driven sector would be a quantum leap in value added and a big boost to employment.

    In renewables, Latin America, South Africa, and the Gulf present lucrative and, for the time being, better opportunities than Turkey – they have had much success in these markets. Brazil, as of 2011, has three wind turbine manufacturing facilities, with another two under construction; Turkey has none and no indications that there are any on the drawing board. In May, Saudi Arabia announced plans for $109bn of solar investment over the coming 20 years, and will start with 2GW of licensing in the first quarter of 2013.

    Closer to home, Romania is installing wind at a faster pace than Turkey. With just a single 14MW farm installed in 2009, it is widely expected that over 2GW will be reached by the end of 2012. Romanian wind is being developed by a who’s who of leading European energy players. Romania has achieved this despite its financial sector being crippled and a great deal of political turnover. Turkey has no such financial or leadership obstacles.

    While foreign investors should be less worried about macro stability, rule of law and other basic investor rights, the World Bank’s ease of doing business ranking, where OECD member Turkey has slipped from 60 in 2010 to 71 in 2012, highlights the problems. Ernst and Young’s Renewable Energy Attractiveness Index paints a similar picture. As indicated by energy minister Taner Yildiz, efforts are being made to streamline processes for the development of renewables. To remember a slogan of sorts that Turkish progressives used in describing the constitutional reform referendum in 2010, “Yetmez ama Evet!” (Not sufficient, but yes!)

    Matthew Vogel is Managing Partner at the renewable energy and agriculture investment firm Alternatif Investments, based in Istanbul. Alternatif Investments holds energy licenses and develops and invests in wind, geothermal and solar power. Previously he was Head of Emerging EMEA Research at Barclays Capital, and at the World Bank.

    Related reading:
    Turkey turns to coal and nuclear power, beyondbrics
    Turkey GDP growth: from go-go to gold, beyondbrics
    Football finance: top Turkish club plans hydropower plant, beyondbrics
    Wind power in China: Turbine talent seeks overseas outlets, FT

  • Turkey’s Dams Are Violating Human Rights, UN Report Says

    Turkey’s Dams Are Violating Human Rights, UN Report Says

    Turkey’s Dams Are Violating Human Rights, UN Report Says

    by Julia

    Turkish dams don’t just affect Turks — they cut off access to water in Iraq and Syria as well, forcing entire populations in those countries to resettle.

    Hydropower seems like the perfect solution to Turkey’s escalating energy demand: a clean form of energy and an irrigation source that can be harnessed from the many rivers that flow through the country. But the real cost of hydropower in Turkey has long been apparent. Building a hydraulic dam requires acres of land around the site to be torn up and clear-cut, displacing local residents, destroying local habitats, and often submerging settlement sites that date back to ancient times.

    Turkey’s government has long been aware of these issues, and mostly ignored them. But a new report submitted to the United Nations Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights puts an international slant on Turkey’s destructive dams. Turkey’s dams, the report alleges, have failed to abide by “international guidelines designed to prevent human rights violations through development and infrastructure projects.”

    Tensions are already high between Turkey and Iraq over the amount of water that Turkey releases from its section of the Euphrates into Iraq. Just last week, Iraqi government officials decried Turkey’s monopolization of the river, calling it “unacceptable” and placing economic sanctions on Turkey until a more equitable water policy is developed.

    In arid Iraq, water is an extremely crucial political issue. The country’s vast marshlands, once home to extraordinary biodiversity and a whole culture of “marsh Arabs”, were destroyed under Saddam Hussein’s regime and are just now beginning to make their recovery. The outcome of that process depends on how much water the area receives in coming years.

    Combined with the severe droughts that Iraq has been experiencing, Turkey’s planned dams on the Tigris and Euphrates rivers don’t bode well for the future of Iraq’s marshes.

    In the next twelve years, Turkey plans to build an additional 1,700 dams, nearly doubling the total number. Virtually every river in the country will be affected. The UN report notes with alarm that the Turkish government has conducted no assessment of the environmental and social impacts of these dams, perhaps because they mostly affect already marginalized groups:

    Although the vast majority of the affected population belongs to vulnerable groups like the rural poor, nomads, Alevi or Kurds, the State party fails to address this issue in violation of art. 2.2 of the Covenant. The State party also fails to fulfil its extraterritorial obligations in respecting the right to food and water in Iraq, where… it has failed to conclude an agreement with the neighbouring country on a fair and equitable sharing of the water.

    Of particular concern to the authors of the UN report is the planned Ilisu Dam on the Tigris river. The project will force the resettlement of 58,000 – 70,000 people, according to the report, but there is no plan in place for how this will occur: a fact the report calls “utterly disturbing”.

    In Iraq, the Ilisu dam would severely diminish the water supply upon which thousands of Iraqis rely, and worsen the quality of the water that remained. The report calls this a violation of Turkey’s “extraterritorial obligations to respect the right to water of the farmers and other residents in Iraq depending on the Tigris river.”

    So what hope remains? Intense local and international activism has so far seemed to be the only way to force a halt to Turkey’s hydraulic construction activity. In February, a dam planned for the country’s only biosphere reserve was canceled thanks to the high-profile opposition it faced.

    The UN committee can, at this stage, do little more than strongly recommend that Turkey revise its planned hydraulic projects. But by drawing international attention to Turkey’s irresponsible dams and the damage they wreak beyond Turkey’s borders, this report will hopefully ignite the type of opposition that can make a real difference.

    via Turkey’s Dams Are Violating Human Rights, UN Report Says | Green Prophet.

  • Turkey’s Great Leap Forward risks cultural and environmental bankruptcy

    Turkey’s Great Leap Forward risks cultural and environmental bankruptcy

    Turkish government’s rush to build dams, hydro and nuclear power plants angers villagers and environmental campaigners

      • Fiachra Gibbons and Lucas Moore in Ankara
      • guardian.co.uk, Sunday 29 May 2011 18.56 BST
      • Article history
      • Tigris River and ancient city of Hasankeyf, Batman Turkey. Image shot 2007. Exact date unknown.

        Work was halted on a massive dam project in Hasankeyf three years ago after the ancient city was flooded. Campaigners fear the government will go ahead with the dam regardless. Photograph: Alamy

        Every springtime Pervin Çoban Savran takes her camels and sheep up into the Taurus mountains of southern Turkey, following the same routes along the Goksu river that Yoruk people like her have taken for more than 1,000 years. To many Turks these last nomadic tribes are symbols of the soul of their nation.

        Their way of life – and that of millions of small farmers – is being threatened by Turkey’s Great Leap Forward, one of the most dramatic and potentially devastating rushes for economic development and prosperity Europe has seen in decades.

        Thousands of dam and hydropower schemes are being built on almost all of the main rivers in a pharaonic push to make Turkey a world economic power by the centenary of the republic in 2023.

        The ruling AK party, expected to win a record third term in next month’s elections, is forcing through a series of gigantic public works projects that include three nuclear power plants – despite Turkey being one of the most seismically active nations on earth.

        The first plant, a prototype Russian reactor on the Mediterranean coast near the port of Mersin, is close to a highly active faultline. A second, Japanese-built, plant will soon follow on the Black Sea near the city of Sinop.

        Prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan raised eyebrows across the world last month by promising to cut a 40-mile canal between the Black Sea and Marmara to relieve the dangerously overcrowded Bosphorus strait, an idea even he calls his “crazy plan”.

        He has since topped that by revealing a blueprint for two new cities to relieve earthquake-prone Istanbul. Critics say they will only further extend Europe’s largest megalopolis, home already to nearly 17 million people.

        It is Erdogan’s declaration that Turkey’s rivers must no longer “run in vain” and 100% of its hydroelectric potential be harnessed over the next 12 years that has environmentalists most worried. They claim that the rush for hydropower is likely to be even more damaging to Turkey’s delicate ecological balance, where desertification and depopulation are already problems.

        Hundreds of private companies have been given extraordinary latitude to evict villagers, expropriate private land, clear state forests and steamroller normal planning restrictions to meet the target of 4,000 hydroelectric schemes by 2023. Protestors claim licences have been granted on highly favourable terms, guaranteeing investors four decades of clear profit.

        The Turkish Water Assembly, an umbrella group researching the impact of the push for more power, argued that 2 million people could be displaced by the hydropower schemes alone. They accuse the government of riding roughshod over human rights, and Turkey’s commitments to preserving its extraordinary biodiversity and cultural heritage, in the name of energy security.

        Campaigners fear Ankara is also determined to press ahead with the massive Ilisu dam project on the Tigris river, which was halted three years ago after an international outcry over the flooding of the ancient city of Hasankeyf.

        The Ilisu dam is dwarfed by the $4bn Beyhan project on the Euphrates, also in the Kurdish south-east, where fears of the forced evacuation of the local population evokes bitter memories of the mass clearances of Kurdish villagers by the Turkish army during the war with the Kurdish separatist PKK in the 1980s.

        Demonstrators intent on converging on Ankara from five corners of the country are still being prevented from reaching the capital after a week-long standoff with riot police outside Ankara. Many, like the Yoruks, had been walking for two months as a part of the Great March of Anatolia, a movement sparked by anger at the hydro plans but which has come to embody growing anxiety that the country is being despoiled in the rush for growth.

        While the neo-liberal reforms of the moderately Islamist AK party have been credited with firing the country’s runaway growth, the gulf between the rich and poor has widened dramatically, and corruption has increased.

        The Turkish government insists it must act radically to safeguard the decade-long boom, with growth this year predicted to top 7% despite the worldwide downturn.

        Energy, however, is the achilles heel of the so-called Anatolian tiger, with industry heavily dependent on imported gas from Russia and Iran. Despite making itself the hub of a network of pipelines serving Europe from Russia, Central Asia and Iran, Turkey is even more at the mercy of Moscow and Tehran – a fact dramaticallydemonstrated four years ago when Iran turned off the tap and sent fuel prices in Istanbul soaring overnight.

        Erdogan has so far been withering of critics of his Great Leap Forward, accusing them of holding Turkey back. He argued that the hydro projects will bring thousands of jobs to the underdeveloped east, irrigate barren land and reverse the wave of migration to the more prosperous west.

        “All investments can have negative outcomes,” he said. “But you can’t give up just because there can be some negative outcomes. We cannot say that there will be no earthquake, but we will take all the precautions.”

        After the Fukushima disaster in Japan, his energy minister Taner Yildiz caused consternation by claiming that nuclear power was no more dangerous than staying single, citing studies showing married people tend to live four years longer. Alcohol and smoking posed more danger than nuclear power, he claimed, prompting comparisons with former president Kenan Evren’s claim after Chernobyl that “radiation is good for the bones”.

        Tourism minister Ertugrul Gunay appeared to break ranks, warning that “if the hydroelectric energy projects are carried out in a reckless manner, cutting out each brook, levelling each mountain and destroying forests just to be able to produce a few watts of energy, tourism would be an impossible dream”, particularly in the Black Sea region.

        His comments came as laws were being drafted to allow nature reserves to be handed over for hydroelectric projects. Still more worrying to campaigners has been the official reaction to the legal morass the plans have created, with almost 100 lawsuits filed in the last two years. Of the 41 cases so far heard, judges have halted 39. Work has often continued in defiance of the courts with the protection of police and gendarmerie.

        Each hydro scheme is allowed to take 90% of the water out of a section of river, leaving the remaining 10 % as “lifeline support”. After the water travels through the turbines, it is returned to the river, but farmers say much of the water is either lost, polluted or has had the “life taken out of it”.

        For Yoruks such as Pervin Çoban Savran it is their very survival that is in question. “Nobody in parliament has shown any interest in our cause,” she said. “They don’t love life, only money. These dams are bringing about our end. Our culture is being destroyed.”

        Hydroelectric projects on the tributaries of the Goksu river have already severelydamaged traditional pastures, she said. “It has affected us very quickly. But in the end, everyone else will suffer too.”

        ‘They want to turn us into slaves’

        “They killed me when they took my land,” said Sinan Akçal, a tea grower from the spectacular Senoz valley on the Black Sea. He has watched his local court order the cancellation of the hydropower project his land was expropriated for no less than three times. But each time the Turkish environment ministry, which originally rubber-stamped the project without an environmental impact assessment, overrides the court ruling – and work on the dam continues.

        In the meantime, large swaths of forest above the valley have been felled, triggering landslides and soil erosion.

        “They’ve taken my land and they’ve offered me 15,000 lira [£5,800]. I didn’t take it, and I won’t take it,” said Akçal, 54. “They just want us to go to the cities and turn us into slaves. But what does 15,000 lira get you in a city? In a year the money will run out.

        “Where I come from, people don’t have a lot of arable land, but we grow corn, potatoes, tea and vegetables and we have everything we need. I don’t need huge amounts more of electricity, it is not going to benefit us. My mother is 84, and she can’t live anywhere else.”

        He added: “The talking is going nowhere. Again and again we went to court – again and again the courts sided with us. But they didn’t stop, they just kept on working, cutting trees, dirtying the water. In total we have counted 25,000 dead fish in our stream.”

  • US chemical conference – fuels from CO2 and hydrogen

    US chemical conference – fuels from CO2 and hydrogen

    Production, Aug  24  2009 (The Hydrogen Journal)


    – A meeting was held during the 238th American Chemical Society national meeting, looking at ways to make jet fuel by reacting carbon dioxide with hydrogen, with researches from the US Naval Research Laboratory, according to an article on Green Car Congress.com.

    Normally a large amount of energy would be needed to make the reaction happen (which is not a useful way to make a fuel). But scientists believe that the amount of energy required could be reduced with catalysts.

    Tests were made using Co/Pt/Al2O3 catalyst under a range of different concentrations of CO2 : H2 and different pressures.

    The UK´s University of Liverpool is also investigating ways to convert CO2 to organic molecules, using electricity as an energy source.

    Green Car Congress article

    The Hydrogen Journal