In 2025, the Ministry of Energy of Turkey will have to decide on the construction of two more NPPs to be located in the area of the city of Sinop and the province of Thrace in the north and northwest of the country. Given that Turkey plans to increase the installed capacity of the NPPs to 7.2 GW by 2035, the total capacity of the two new power plants will be at least 2.4 GW. The nuclear reactors will reduce the need for natural gas imports. The potential savings can be estimated by taking an example of the Belarusian NPP whose two power units with a total capacity of 2.4 GW make possible to reduce by 5 billion cubic meters annual gas consumption. Accordingly, 7.2 GW of NPP capacity will allow Turkey to save 15 billion cubic meters of gas per year (excluding a potential growth in demand), which exceeds the current volume of LNG imports (14.8 billion cubic meters in regasified equivalent according to Energy Institute data for 2023).
Therefore, Turkey will be able to use the resources of the Sakarya gas field in the Black Sea not only for import substitution, but also for getting an access to foreign markets when implementing the idea of creating a gas hub in the country. The current production volume at the Sakarya field is estimated to be 5 million cubic meters per day (1.8 billion cubic meters per year); following the completion of Phase 2, which is expected in 2028, production is supposed to reach 40 million cubic meters per day, i.e. almost 15 billion cubic meters of gas per year, which is slightly less than one of the two strings of the Turkish Stream (15.75 billion cubic meters per year) through which gas is supplied from Russia to Turkey.
The NPP commissioning will also allow Turkey to significantly increase the share of clean generation. According to the Ember, coal, gas and fuel oil accounted for 58% of electricity generation in Turkey in 2023, while low-carbon sources accounted for 42%. After commissioning of the Akkuyu NPP, the share of low-carbon generation would exceed 50%, and at the same time, the country will increase its use of renewable energy sources. The installed capacity of the renewable energy power plants in Turkey rose from 44.4 GW in 2023 to 58.5 GW in 2023, and one-third of this increase was provided by solar panels, which can become a driver of development of small-scale generation. The Ember estimates that the total area of the pitched and flat roofs in Turkey is sufficient enough for accommodation of 120 GW of PV panels, which exceeds the current capacity of all power plants in the country.
As a consequence, the role of thermal power plants in Turkey’s power sector is going to decrease in the coming years, and with it – the need for imports of coal, natural gas and oil products.
