MIDDLE EAST TECHNICAL UNIVERSITY

Department of Economics Seminar Series 

"Coal Phase-out in the Turkish Power Sector towards Net-zero Emission Targets: An Integrated Assessment of Energy-Economy-Environment Modeling"

by

Ebru Voyvoda

(Middle East Technical University)

Date: November 4, 2024 (Monday)

Time: 14:00

Place: F106, FEAS - Building A

Abstract

Power sector plays a crucial role towards decarbonization of the economies in line with the net-zero targets to limit global warming by 1.5 ℃. The technical constraints intrinsic to the sector, penetration of new technologies, investment and operational costs as well as its links with the rest of the economy make the power sector a complex system to analyze. Although there are numerous studies to integrate bottom-up power sector technology models and top-down macroeconomic models; this study is the first attempt to couple three separate models within a single framework: an electricity market simulation model, a generation expansion planning model and a macroeconomic applied general equilibrium model. Thus, the paradigms of power engineering, operations research, and economics of general equilibrium are holistically represented in the proposed framework in a way that combines the long-term dynamics consistently with the short-term hourly analysis. The proposed framework is implemented to analyze alternative scenarios aiming at successful phasing-out of coal-fired power plants in Turkey by year 2035. Our results suggest that, given the existing capacity and future potential of renewables, Turkey can achieve her coal-phase out by early 2030s, with 2035 at the latest. We also find that under the coal phase-out scenario, while real GDP and electricity demand increases by over 50%, installed capacity and generation of coal-fired power plants reduces by 62% and 70% respectively between 2018 and 2030, and is reduced practically to zero in 2035. Consequently, the CO2 emissions from power sector are reduced by 50% in 2030 compared to their 2018 level.