Turkey plans to establish a 3,500-megawatt (MW) thermal power plant with a $5 billion investment in the western province of Afyon, which possesses 950 million tons of lignite, the energy minister said yesterday.
Taner Yıldız said in a written statement that the exploration by the Mineral Research and Exploration (MTA) in the Dinar district of Afyon, which has been continuing for five years, had now been completed and that they had discovered lignite reserves in the area totaling around 950 million tons.
“We aim to build a thermal power plant, worth $5 billion, that will have 3,500 MW of power. It means employment for 6,000 or 7,000 in the plant’s construction and the mining field,” he said.
Yıldız recalled that Turkey’s goal was to generate one-third of its electricity via coal by 2023. “We aim to raise the local coal-fired power plant’s capacity to 30,000 MW in the next 10 years,” adding that coal power plants would be built using resources from the Turkish Coal Enterprises’ (TKİ) coal mining fields in Afşin-Elbistan, Karapinar-Konya, Dinar-Afyon and Alpu-Eskişehir.