Turkey ranked as the world's third most attractive emerging photovoltaic (PV)
market, followed by Romania, market researcher IHS said on
Wednesday.
"Turkey rounds out the top three emerging markets, the result
of conditions conducive to the development of PV including soaring power demand
and prices, relatively low country risk and established PV incentives," the
market researcher said in a statement upon the publication of the IHS Emerging
PV Markets Attractiveness Index for the fourth quarter of 2013. South Africa and
Thailand topped the ranking.
An obstacle to Turkey’s growth, however, is
the relative immaturity of its solar projects pipeline, with projects larger
than 1.0 megawatt (MW) currently at a standstill awaiting the tender of 600 MW
of licences.
While IHS sees the potential for the installation of 1.0
gigawatts (GW) of solar capacity in Turkey by 2017, it forecasts a build-out of
only 150 MW this year in the country.
“Permitting and grid connection
contracts remain the main bottleneck in 2014,” Josefin Berg, senior PV analyst
at IHS, said in the statement.
The index ranks the attractiveness of PV
markets in emerging countries to investors, developers and manufacturers in four
key areas: macroeconomic climate, potential market size, project profitability
and pipeline maturity. Among the top five countries in the index, South Africa
ranked highest in potential market size, project profitability and pipeline
maturity.
Turkey had a score of 45 points out of 100, Romania had 43
points.