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Geothermal can heat 70% of Turkiye – JESDER President

Geothermal can heat 70% of Turkiye – JESDER President Ufuk Sentürk, Chairman of the Board of JESDER
Carlo Cariaga 12 Jan 2023

Ufuk Senturk, Chairman of the Board of JESDER, stated that, if the necessary support and incentives are provided, 70% of Turkiye can be heated with geothermal.

In an interview with an AA correspondent, Ufuk Senturk, President of the Geothermal Power Plant Investors Association (JESDER) in Turkiye,  said, “We are working to ensure that clean and domestic energy is preferred in this period of energy crisis. If the necessary support and incentives can be provided to geothermal energy, we can reach the potential to heat 70 percent of the country with geothermal energy.”

Senturk stated that the global energy crisis accelerated the use of domestic resources by countries and that the advantages of geothermal energy should be taken advantage of to eliminate foreign dependence on energy, “In this period, countries brought energy supply security to the top of the agenda. From the perspective of Turkiye, the heating need is equivalent to approximately 9.5 billion cubic meters of natural gas. We can save this much natural gas by using geothermal. The financial return of this to our country is 4.3 billion dollars per year,” he said.

Senturk said, “The Turkish Petroleum Association (TPAO) has drilled 4000 wells to date. 2000 of them contain water and are not used by TPAO. We expect our Ministry of Energy and Natural Resources to open these hot water wells for investments in geothermal greenhouse and city heating.”

In his statements, he stated that thousands of drilling wells drilled by TPAO, Mineral Research and Exploration, and the private sector are waiting to be developed in many cities.

Senturk further added: “We are working to prefer clean and domestic energy in this period of energy crisis. If the necessary support and incentives for geothermal energy can be provided, we have the potential to heat 70% of the country with geothermal energy, especially in our provinces in Southeastern Anatolia and Eastern Anatolia.”

“Geothermal resources are already available in the wells drilled by TPAO for oil exploration, with a depth of approximately 2,000 meters and at least 2,000 of which were closed due to insufficient oil. These wells can be used immediately by transferring them to the private sector and local governments.”

Expressing that tax incentives can be provided to the private sector in drilling activities, which is an expensive practice, Senturk said, “Geothermal heating can be started in 5-10 years, especially with the support of providing the diesel used in exploration without VAT.”

YEKDEM must be restored

Senturk said that using geothermal energy has a higher cost risk compared to other sources and that these costs should be reduced with the incentives provided and the risk should be shared: “Besides, the meter costs of the wells to be used in city heating and greenhouses are around 1000-1500 dollars. We know that if we reduce these costs as much as possible, we know that their contribution to our country will be much more in the medium and long term.”

“We expect the YEKDEM mechanism, which broke records in our sector, to be restored. Another issue is that we need to lay kilometers of pipes between streets and avenues for city heating. There are also zoning problems here. If BOTAS distributes geothermal water to residences as well as gas distribution, we will reach our target of 1 million residences in this regard.”

Source: AA via our Turkish language platform JeotermalHaberler