While the details remain dim and unfocused, we see a special and unique role emerging for Turkey in the global debate unfolding in Copenhagen on climate change.
A glance through yesterday’s Hürriyet Daily News & Economic Review reveals a few observations:
Global energy use, which will be down a bit when all the accounts for the crisis year of 2009 are in, will quickly resume its consumption-based march upward.
Demand will increase by at least 40 percent by 2030, according to the International Energy Agency. In Turkey, the percentage increase will be dramatically greater.
There is just one challenge: The needed increase in oil production over that period will be equivalent to four times the current production of Russia.
Turkey, if it can lose the mind-bending shackles of entrenched bureaucratic thinking and acting, has a significant hand to play in this energy game. Obviously, the country will be a critical transit hub in just about any scenario one can contrive; some accounts estimate 8 percent of the world’s carbon-based energy will be transiting through Turkey in less than a decade.
But the emerging scramble for alternatives, driven by the dire concerns of climate change, is an area where Turkey wields a serious hand of cards as well.
As negotiators in Copenhagen yesterday were hearing visions of electric cars and smart grids, it is instructive that an international conference on wind energy was wrapping up in Istanbul.
Windy Turkey could well become a major world center of wind-energy production within five years, predicted Alexis DeBeaumont, vice-president of the energy firm Alstrom.
Hurriyet for more