Security of energy supply in Turkey: Challenges and solutions

Energy security has recently gained importance for many commercial, industrial, and government facilities. Increasing the security of energy supply is essentially a strategy to reduce or hedge risks that derive from energy use, production and imports. The aim of this paper is to identify the main challenges concerning the security of energy supply in Turkey and to offer solutions. Rapid population growth and economic development in the country have resulted in rapid increases in energy demand in recent years. Turkey is currently heavily dependent on fossil fuels for energy consumption, with oil, natural gas, and coal being the predominant energy sources, accounting for a significant majority of the total energy consumption. Turkey has very limited domestic sources of oil and natural gas, thus it is almost entirely dependent on foreign sources. Due to continuously increase of energy consumption Turkey will be forced to import increasing amounts of fossil fuels. In spite of Turkey’s heavy dependence on fossil fuels for energy demand, the country has a large potential for development of renewable resources of every type. In addition, Turkey has considerable thorium reserves as future nuclear fuel source.