Juan Cole Informed Comment
In the first seven months of 2026, Turkiye generated 61% of its electricity from renewable sources. Since hydro and solar generation have seasonal peaks, that rate may not be maintained through the end of this year, but renewables are anyway central to the country’s grid now.
In July, solar electricity generation soared to 15% of the total, up by half again over last year’s average. The country’s sunny summers are ideal for solar energy generation.
Already by the end of 2025, wind and solar alone supplied 22% of the country’s electricity, according to the Ember energy consultancy. Türkiye also is rich in hydroelectric power, its biggest single source of renewable energy, and has small amounts of geothermal and biofuels. Türkiye’s solar capacity doubled between 2023 and 2025, an impressive achievement by any measure.
Remember that Türkiye’s energy appetite, as a fast-growing economy, is enormous and has been growing 5% a year. So renewables not only have to replace existing coal and gas, they have to meet substantial new demand.
While Türkiye and Morocco lead the greater Middle East region in wind and solar, Türkiye is toward the bottom of the pack among the big electricity users in Europe for those two renewables.
Türkiye’s parliament passed a climate law last year that enshrines in statute its commitments under the Paris Climate Agreement of 2015. That is to say, Türkiye is miles ahead of the US on this issue.
The country is also making strides in electrifying transport. In 2021, it had only 7,698 EVs, but today there are nearly half a million electric vehicles on the road. Pure battery EVs and plug-in hybrids together account for 25% of new car sales. Türkiye has nearly 48,000 charging points. That number is wholly insufficient. Car sales fell 8% in H1 because of tight credit, but plug-in hybrid sales beat this trend, growing 6%, likely because of high gasoline prices owing to the Iran War. Pure EVs were not as popular as hybrids, probably because of the still inadequate charging infrastructure.
On October 1, gasoline prices in Türkiye will skyrocket, as the government halts subsidies and the Strait of Hormuz continues to be partially blocked. We’ll see how EVs do in the aftermath.
The bad news is that 34% of the Turkish grid is still supplied by coal, and 2/3s of that coal is imported. Türkiye could save billions and have a clean, efficient grid, if it accelerated the replacement of coal with renewables.
Türkiye used to be almost entirely dependent on coal for power and heating. I remember how bad the smog was back in the 1970s was when I first visited the country. First fossil gas and now renewables have displaced much of that coal use. But not enough. Coal is the devil’s own rock, the most polluting of the fossil fuels.
Actually, Türkiye’s current installed capacity of solar would cover some 20% of the country’s needs with enough battery capacity. At the moment solar generation wasted because midday surpluses are not stored, and potential generation is lost because the panels only generate power in daylight. The country has 40 gigawatts of wind and solar capacity, but at the moment that does not translate into 40 GW of electricity generation.
Photo by Yusuf Onuk on Unsplash
That situation is changing rapidly because of a 2022 law that requires solar and wind facilities to budget for battery storage as well. For instance, a 122 megawatt wind farm being built at Antalya will have 122 MW of battery storage. Türkiye already has 33 gigawatts of battery capacity installed or in the pipeline, twice what is typical for its European peers.
Türkiye is planning to invest $200 bn. in the energy sector, including renewables and nuclear, over the next nine years. It is aiming to triple its installed wind and solar capacity to 120 gigawatts by 2035. This achievement would require 9 gigawatts of new solar and wind installations annually, a step up from the 6.5 gigawatts of panels and turbines the country has been putting in yearly since 2023.
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