Cobenefits Starts in Turkey with First Council Meeting

The long-await­ed offi­cial ini­ti­a­tion of the Turkey com­po­nent of the COBENEFITS project in mid-Feb­ru­ary was crowned with the first gath­er­ing of the COBENEFITS Coun­cil – the inter-min­is­te­r­i­al con­sul­ta­tive body that is expect­ed to pro­vide guid­ance and ensure rel­e­vance, applic­a­bil­i­ty and polit­i­cal own­er­ship of the project and its outputs.

Rep­re­sen­ta­tives from the Min­istry of Eco­nom­ics, Min­istry of Ener­gy and Nat­ur­al Resources and the Min­istry of Envi­ron­ment and Urban­iza­tion hon­oured this first Coun­cil meet­ing, the pre­mier agen­da item of which was the iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of pri­or­i­ty co-ben­e­fits of renew­able pow­er gen­er­a­tion in Turkey.

After an intense after­noon of pro­duc­tive and live­ly debates, ener­gy sup­ply secu­ri­ty, eco­nom­ic pros­per­i­ty, sus­tain­able employ­ment, trade oppor­tu­ni­ties and improv­ing the qual­i­ty of life of cit­i­zens have been iden­ti­fied as the main co-ben­e­fit areas that could be deliv­ered by increas­ing share of renew­ables in Turkey’s pow­er mix. Turkey’s efforts to ensure sus­tain­able devel­op­ment of renew­able ener­gy tech­nolo­gies and the impor­tance of a com­pre­hen­sive under­stand­ing of co-ben­e­fits of renew­ables in order to sus­tain polit­i­cal sup­port for wind, solar and oth­er renew­able ener­gy tech­nolo­gies were high­light­ed dur­ing the discussions.

The next step in the project time­line is the con­duct of capac­i­ty needs assess­ments and research needs assess­ments in order to inform the co-ben­e­fits analy­ses and train­ing activ­i­ties that will be deliv­ered in the next cou­ple of years.