Turkey's solar energy market study and potential economic benefits

Energy -especially electricity- consumption is considered a prime agent in economic development. Electricity is mainly produced by thermal power plants via coal, lignite, natural gas, fuel oil and geothermal energy, hydro power plants in Turkey. Turkey has no sufficient large oil and gas reserves but has a considerably high level of solar energy resources. Solar energy is considered a key energy source for the future, not only for Turkey, but also for the world. For these reasons, the development and use of solar energy technologies are increasingly becoming vital for sustainable economic development. The objective in doing this study is to investigate the solar energy market in electricity production and legislations and to analyze economic and employment impacts of the solar energy industry in Turkey. In this concept, the solar energy potential of Turkey, the energy politics and related incentive, pricing and trade mechanisms, research and development studies and funds, employment impacts for development of solar energy in the electricity production are investigated in this study. In the first phase, development of solar energy technology and market and the effects of economic development in the world has been discussed. The impacts of regularity framework and government incentives for solar technologies and allocated budgets of research and development for solar energy technology in the world has been examined. In the second phase, the structure of power market and regularity framework, relevant solar energy pioneers and projects in Turkey have been analyzed with depth interview of main stakeholders. Energy and specially solar related research development budgets data of Turkey within the years has been collected from governmental agencies, universities and companies with survey study, which has been evaluated by indicators of world?s primary countries. The possible employment impacts of solar technology has been estimated, hence the intimate connection between solar energy and sustainable development. As a result; solar energy in Turkey would be the primary source of energy demand and would have big employment effects on the economics. This can only be achieved with the support of governmental feed-in tariff policies of solar energy and by increasing research-developments funds.