Turkey's COP31 Plan: More Electric Power, More Recycling, Less Talk About Coal

Turkey is getting ready to host COP31, a major United Nations climate summit opening on November 9 in the city of Antalya. The country wants to show the world it is serious about clean energy by pushing for more electric power and promoting a recycling program called the Zero Waste Initiative. But environmental groups say Turkey is avoiding a big problem: it still depends heavily on coal, and it keeps bringing in plastic waste from Europe. Critics argue that Turkey's climate goals are not strong enough to truly fight global warming.

Turkey's environment minister, Murat Kurum, is also the president of COP31. He wants countries around the world to make electricity 35 percent of their total energy use by the year 2035. This idea is called the '35 by 35' target, and it is one of ten action steps Turkey is promoting at the summit. Kurum says that using more electricity protects people from rising fuel prices and helps cut greenhouse gas emissions. 'Electrification is the answer,' he said in a speech on November 5.

Turkey has worked hard to build more renewable energy sources in recent years. Its energy minister announced a plan worth 500 billion U.S. dollars to grow the country's wind and solar power four times larger than it is today. That would bring Turkey's total wind and solar capacity to 175 gigawatts, which is enough to power tens of millions of homes. These advances show that Turkey is making real progress toward cleaner energy. However, critics say the country still has a long way to go.

One major concern is Turkey's continued use of coal. About one-third of Turkey's electricity still comes from coal-fired power plants, and the country has not set a date to stop using coal. In fact, Turkey has plans to expand two existing coal plants, even as it pushes for more renewables. Emel Turker Alpay, an energy expert with Greenpeace Turkey, warned that the '35 by 35' target does not require that electricity come from clean sources. She said the most important step would be for Turkey to promise not to build any new coal plants and to set a clear timeline for moving away from fossil fuels.

Turkey has set a goal of reaching net-zero emissions by 2053, meaning it wants to stop adding more greenhouse gases to the atmosphere by that year. But a group called Climate Action Tracker reviewed Turkey's shorter-term goals and found them far too weak. It gave Turkey's climate plan a rating of 'critically insufficient.' One researcher explained that even though Turkey promised to cut its projected emissions by 41 percent by 2035, the math actually allows emissions to rise 16 percent above today's levels in real terms. In other words, Turkey's emissions could keep going up, not down.

Turkey is also promoting its Zero Waste Initiative at COP31. This program was created by Emine Erdogan, the wife of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and it focuses on reducing methane gas that comes from trash and waste. Methane is a powerful greenhouse gas that traps heat in the atmosphere. The initiative calls for cutting projected global waste growth in half by 2035. Greenpeace's Alpay said this goal sounds good, but the plan mostly deals with managing waste after it is already created, rather than stopping waste from being produced in the first place.

Another problem is that Turkey imports large amounts of plastic waste, much of it from European countries. This makes Turkey something like a dumping ground for other nations' trash. Turkey has also not signed the Global Methane Pledge, an international agreement to reduce methane emissions. Alpay explained that the plastics industry is closely tied to the fossil fuel industry, because extra oil and gas that cannot be burned for energy is turned into plastic products instead. She said that focusing only on recycling does not do much to reduce climate-changing emissions, and that real change requires stronger action on both waste and fossil fuels.