Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said that Türkiye is leading in green energy investments, with the share of renewable energy in total energy capacity rising to over 60 percent as of this year.

Speaking at the 11th Energy Efficiency Forum and Exhibition in Istanbul on Monday, Erdogan emphasised that the world’s energy needs are increasing year by year in parallel with the growing population and growing economy.

“Another point worth noting is that rising energy demand signals not only population growth and development, but also increased prosperity. Parallel to this increase in prosperity, the use of energy, especially electricity, is expanding,” he said.

Erdogan noted that the government has been carrying out comprehensive projects to increase energy efficiency since 2002, and thanks to these projects, energy intensity has improved by 32 percent.

“We have reduced the amount of energy consumed per product and service by one-third. While the world improves energy intensity by an average of 1 percent annually, Türkiye has improved by 4.5 percent. We have become one of the countries that have increased energy efficiency most rapidly,” he said.

“In the first eight months of this year alone, we paid $26 billion for energy imports. We are working diligently to reduce this bill,” Erdogan said. “Our daily consumption of oil is around 1 million barrels. We procure 160,000 barrels of this from our own resources.”

The president noted that even though Türkiye has made significant progress in its Black Sea gas and Gabar oil discoveries, the picture before it is that it still has “some distance” to go.

“We currently rank fifth in the world with four active drilling and two seismic-research vessels. With the entry of our new vessels into the inventory, we will rise to fourth place,” Erdogan stated.

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