ANTALYA (The Thursday Times) — Saudi Arabia and Türkiye have signed an agreement at COP31 to build wind power plants with a total capacity of 3,000 megawatts in Türkiye, the second phase of an energy pact struck in February, Türkiye’s energy ministry said.
The new plants would equal about a fifth of Türkiye’s existing installed wind power capacity. “We are deepening our strategic energy cooperation with Saudi Arabia,” Energy Minister Alparslan Bayraktar said, adding that the investments were meant to strengthen grid infrastructure and make the power system more flexible.
The first phase of the February pact covers solar power plants with a combined capacity of 2,000MW, to be built by Saudi Arabia’s ACWA Power in Sivas and in the Taseli area of Karaman. With the wind projects, the plants to be built jointly with Saudi Arabia will total 5,000MW.
Meeting Türkiye’s long-term energy targets will require an average of about 10,000MW of new wind and solar capacity a year, according to government plans.
Energy day at the climate talks
The deal was signed as the Turkish presidency used COP31 to promote its proposal to raise electricity’s share of global energy use to 35 per cent by 2035. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was due to host a high-level session on Wednesday titled “Clean Energy Transition by 2035: Powering the Future”, which Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif was scheduled to attend.
The COP31 leaders’ summit opened on Wednesday with UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres calling for a “Climate Justice Compact” and urging the world to triple renewable capacity by 2035.
