Milliyet – French utility company GDF Suez, with operations in electricity generation, distribution and energy trading, has filed a license application to set up a coal-fired plant in Adana , Türkiye. The proposed plant will have an installed capacity of 1,320 MWs, according to a news report citing sources from Türkiye’s Energy Market Regulatory Authority (EPDK).
The consortium to build the Ada Power Plant, estimated at a cost of TRY 1.6 billion (approx. USD 950 million), is comprised of GDF Suez, as the majority partner, with its subsidiary International Power and Turkish Mimag Energy as minority stakeholders. The application to invest in a coal-fired plant comes as Türkiye looks for alternative sources to generate power rather than the imported natural gas.
Coal burning plants are now gathering investor interest, as the new incentive system has left the natural-gas fired plants out, causing a decline in license applications to build them, according to EPDK Head, Hasan Koktas.
Türkiye has proven reserves of 500 million tons of coal and recent findings point to a large deposit of lignite of about 1.8 billion tons in the central Anatolian province of Konya.
The country recently entered into a USD 12 billion agreement with the Emirati state-owned company TAQA to develop coal fields in the southeastern province of Kahramanmaras.