![Estimated capital and total annualised costs from different power technologies in Turkey (billion US$). [Total capital costs for the installed capacity in 2010: 69.3 bn US $. Total annualised costs: 25.9 bn US$. Billion ¼10 9 .]](https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Burcin-Atilgan-Tuerkmen/publication/297745974/figure/fig3/AS:342139138527234@1458583735716/Estimated-capital-and-total-annualised-costs-from-different-power-technologies-in-Turkey_Q320.jpg)
Content uploaded by Burcin Atilgan Türkmen
Author content
All content in this area was uploaded by Burcin Atilgan Türkmen on Mar 21, 2016
Content may be subject to copyright.
An integrated life cycle sustainability assessment of electricity
generation in Turkey
Burcin Atilgan, Adisa Azapagic
n
School of Chemical Engineering and Analytical Science, The Mill, Room C16, Sackville Street, The University of Manchester, Manchester M13 9PL, UK
HIGHLIGHTS
First integrated life cycle sustainability assessment of the electricity sector in Turkey.
11 environmental, three economic and six social sustainability indicators estimated.
Multi-criteria decision analysis carried out to identify most sustainable options.
Hydro is the most sustainable option for Turkey, followed by geothermal and wind.
This work demonstrates how tensions among sustainability aspects can be reconciled.
article info
Article history:
Received 28 November 2015
Received in revised form
25 February 2016
Accepted 26 February 2016
Keywords:
Electricity generation
Economic costing
Life cycle assessment
Social assessment
Sustainability assessment
Turkey
abstract
This paper presents for the first time an integrated life cycle sustainability assessment of the electricity
sector in Turkey, considering environmental, economic and social aspects. Twenty life cycle sustainability
indicators (11 environmental, three economic and six social) are used to evaluate the current electricity
options. Geothermal power is the best option for six environmental impacts but it has the highest capital
costs. Small reservoir and run-of-river power has the lowest global warming potential while large re-
servoir is best for the depletion of elements and fossil resources, and acidification. It also has the lowest
levelised costs, worker injuries and fatalities but provides the lowest life cycle employment opportu-
nities. Gas power has the lowest capital costs but it provides the lowest direct employment and has the
highest levelised costs and ozone layer depletion. Given these trade-offs, a multi-criteria decision ana-
lysis has been carried out to identify the most sustainable options assuming different stakeholder pre-
ferences. For all the preferences considered, hydropower is the most sustainable option for Turkey, fol-
lowed by geothermal and wind electricity. This work demonstrates the importance for energy policy of
an integrated life cycle sustainability assessment and how tensions between different aspects can be
reconciled to identify win-win solutions.
&2016 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY license
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
1. Introduction
Sustainable development is becoming increasingly important
for many nations. The publication of ‘Our Common Future’(WCED,
1987), gave the most widely used definition of sustainable devel-
opment as “development that meets the needs of the present
without compromising the ability of future generations to meet
their own needs”. It is now widely recognised and accepted that
sustainable development involves balancing environmental, eco-
nomic and social issues (Perdan, 2011). Taking a life cycle approach
to sustainable development ensures that sustainability aspects are
taken into account over the whole life cycle of a system being
considered (Perdan, 2011;UNEP/SETAC, 2011). Life cycle sustain-
ability assessment (LCSA) is ideally suited for evaluating the en-
vironmental, economic and social sustainability (UNEP/SETAC,
2011). LCSA integrates environmental life cycle assessment (LCA),
life cycle costing (LCC) and social life cycle assessment (S-LCA) to
help estimate the level of sustainability of a product, sector or an
economy (Guinée et al., 2011;Zamagni et al., 2013).
The electricity sector is important for sustainable development
of a region or a country as it affects various environmental, eco-
nomic and social issues across the supply chain. As indicated in
Table 1, these issues have been studied on a life cycle basis for
different countries, including Australia, Germany, Mexico, Nigeria,
Singapore and the UK. The studies varied with respect to the
methodology used for the assessment as well as the electricity
technologies and sustainability indicators considered. Life cycle
assessment (LCA) has been the most widely used methodology for
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/enpol
Energy Policy
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.enpol.2016.02.055
0301-4215/&2016 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
n
Corresponding author.
E-mail address: adisa.azapagic@manchester.ac.uk (A. Azapagic).
Energy Policy 93 (2016) 168–186
Table 1
Recent studies on life cycle sustainability assessment of electricity technologies in different countries.
Authors Scope Country Technologies considered Sustainability issues (number)
Hirschberg et al. (2004) Sustainability of electricity supply
technologies
Germany Coal, oil, natural gas, nuclear, hydro, wind, solar Economic (7): Financial requirements and resources
Environmental (5): Climate change, emissions to air, waste, land use,
severe accidents
Social (6): Employment, proliferation, human health, local dis-
turbances, risk aversion, critical waste confinement time
May and Brennan
(2006)
Sustainability assessment of electricity Australia Coal, natural gas Economic (5): Wealth generation, capital requirements
Environmental (12): Climate change, resource depletion, acidifica-
tion, eutrophication, photochemical smog, human toxicity, ecotoxi-
city, solid wastes, particulates, water consumption
Social (4): Employees, health and safety
Kannan et al. (2007) Life cycle energy, emissions and costs of
power
Singapore Coal, gas, oil, solar Economic (3): Total levelised costs
Environmental (2): Climate change, energy use
Genoud and Lesourd
(2009)
Characterization of sustainable development
indicators for various power generation
technologies
Not specified Coal, natural gas, oil, nuclear, hydro, solar, wind, geothermal Economic (5): Efficiency, renewability, production capacity upon
demand, possibility of growth, cost
Environmental (10): CO
2
,NO
x
,SO
2
, VOCs, Cd, CH
4
emissions, parti-
cles, biochemical oxygen demand, radioactivity, noise pollution
Social (6): Notion of public good, land area requirement, energy
payback, employment, supply risk, use of local energy resources
Evans et al. (2009) Assessment of sustainability indicators for re-
newable energy technologies
Not specified Solar PV, wind, hydro, geothermal Techno-economic (3): Levelised costs, efficiency of energy conver-
sion, availability, technical limitations
Environmental (3): Climate change, water consumption, land use
Social (8): Toxin release, noise, bird strike risk, visual amenity, effect
on agriculture and seismic activity, odour, river damage
Gujba et al. (2010) Sustainability assessment of energy systems Nigeria Coal, natural gas, oil, hydro, biomass, solar, wind Economic (3): Levelised costs, capital costs, total annualised costs
Environmental (10): Climate change, ecotoxicity, ozone layer deple-
tion, acidification, eutrophication, photochemical smog, human
toxicity, resource depletion
Jeswani et al. (2011) Assessing options for electricity generation
from biomass
UK Coal, direct-fired biomass, gasified biomass Environmental (5): Climate change, acidification, eutrophication,
photochemical smog, human toxicity
Economic (2): Capital costs, total annualised costs
Stamford and Azapagic
(2012)
Sustainability assessment of electricity UK Nuclear, coal, natural gas, offshore wind, solar Techno-economic (13): Operability, technological lock-in, immediacy,
levelised costs, cost variability, financial incentives
Environmental (11): Climate change, recyclability, ecotoxicity, ozone
layer depletion, acidification, eutrophication, photochemical smog,
land use
Social (19): Provision of employment, human health impacts, large
accident risk, local community impacts, human rights and corrup-
tion, energy security, nuclear proliferation, intergenerational equity
Maxim (2014) Sustainability assessment of electricity gen-
eration technologies
Not specified Coal, natural gas, piston engine, combined heat and power
(CHP), fuel cell, hydro (large and small), wind (onshore and
offshore), solar, geothermal, biomass, nuclear
Techno-economic (4): Ability to respond to demand, efficiency, ca-
pacity factor, levelised costs
Environmental (2): Land use, external costs (environmental)
Social (4): External costs (human health), job creation, social ac-
ceptability, external supply risk
Santoyo-Castelazo and
Azapagic (2014)
Sustainability assessment of electricity Mexico Nuclear, coal, natural gas, oil, hydro, geothermal, wind Economic (3): Levelised costs, capital costs, total annualised costs
Environmental (10): Climate change, ecotoxicity, ozone layer deple-
tion, acidification, eutrophication, photochemical smog, human
toxicity, resource depletion
Social (4): Energy security, public acceptability, health and safety, in-
tergenerational issues
B. Atilgan, A. Azapagic / Energy Policy 93 (2016) 168–186 16 9
evaluating the environmental sustainability. All of the studies
considered environmental and economic issues and most assessed
the social sustainability, except Kannan et al. (2007),Jeswani et al.
(2011) and Gujba et al. (2010). Some studies also included tech-
nological issues such as efficiency, capacity factor, availability and
operability (Evans et al., 2009;Stamford and Azapagic, 2012;
Maxim, 2014).
However, to date, there have been no sustainability studies of
electricity generation in Turkey. Turkey is developing rapidly and
its electricity consumption is growing fast. In 2010, the total in-
stalled capacity of 49,524 MW generated 211,208 GWh of elec-
tricity, four times more than in 1990 (TEIAS, 2012). Although the
country's electricity mix includes hydropower, wind and geo-
thermal power, coal and natural gas dominate, providing 73% of
the total generation (EUAS, 2011). As a result of its growing elec-
tricity demand and a lack of domestic fossil fuels (apart from lig-
nite), Turkey has become dependent on other countries with the
share of imported power continuing to increase each year. The
security of energy supply, especially of natural gas imports, is one
of the most important energy strategy objectives in Turkey (MENR,
2009). Moreover, the high share of fossil fuels in the national
electricity mix, together with the increasing demand, has led to a
steady increase in greenhouse gas emissions and other environ-
mental impacts from the electricity sector.
Being a party to Kyoto Protocol (Annex I), Turkey is under
pressure to reduce its emissions. On the other hand, the price of
electricity is high owing to the import dependency: 14.8 US$ cent/
kWh for industrial and 18.5 US$ cent/kWh for domestic con-
sumers, around 20% and 10% above the OECD average, respectively
(IEA, 2014). Additionally, there are serious issues related to the
occupational safety in the Turkish electricity sector, with over 300
deaths in 2014 alone as a result of coal mine accidents (Acar et al.,
2015). However, beyond these scant data, there is little informa-
tion on the sustainability of the electricity sector in Turkey, par-
ticularly on a life cycle basis.
Therefore, this paper sets out to evaluate the life cycle sus-
tainability of the Turkish electricity sector by considering different
technologies currently operational in Turkey and integrating en-
vironmental, economic and social aspects. As far as the authors are
aware, this is a first study of its kind for Turkey, aiming to inform
future energy policy.
2. Methodology
As outlined in Fig. 1, the methodology for evaluating the sus-
tainability applied in this work involves five steps: definition of
the goal and scope of the assessment; identification of sustain-
ability issues and related indicators; life cycle sustainability as-
sessment of different electricity options taking into account en-
vironmental, economic and social aspects; integration of these
aspects using multi-criteria decision analysis; and policy re-
commendations. These steps, together with the data and as-
sumptions used in the study, are described in more detail in the
following sections.
2.1. Goal and scope definition
The goal of this study is to evaluate the life cycle sustainability
of the Turkish electricity sector by considering environmental,
economic and social impacts of different technologies currently
present in the electricity mix. The findings will be used to identify
the most sustainable electricity options for the country and make
policy recommendations for improving the sustainability in the
electricity sector.
The unit of analysis (functional unit) is ‘generation of 1 kWh of
electricity in Turkey’. The scope of the study is from ‘cradle to
grave’, taking into account extraction, processing and transporta-
tion of raw materials and fuels (where relevant) as well as con-
struction, operation and decommissioning of power plants (Fig. 2).
In total, there are 516 power plants in Turkey, all of which are
considered. The focus is on electricity generation so that its
transmission, distribution and use are outside the scope of the
study.
2.2. Sustainability issues and indicators
The sustainability issues and indicators relevant to the Turkish
electricity sector have been identified through an extensive lit-
erature survey, taking into account government and industry re-
ports and strategy documents (e.g. IAEA (2005),MENR (2009),
Chatzimouratidis and Pilavachi (2009),Onat and Bayar (2010),
Kaygusuz (2011),Serencam and Serencam (2013)) as well as pre-
vious sustainability studies of electricity elsewhere (e.g. those
listed in Table 1). The issues and related indicators are summarised
in Table 2 with a brief overview given below; for further details on
how the individual indicators have been calculated, see Section 1
in the Supplementary material.
As indicated in Table 2, the following environmental issues are
considered: climate change, resource depletion and emissions to
air, water and soil. Since LCA has been used in this work to assess
the environmental sustainability, these issues have been trans-
lated into 11 environmental indicators typically considered in LCA
and quantified using the CML 2001 impact assessment method
(Guinée et al., 2001), November 2010 update. The LCA has been
carried out following the guidelines in the ISO 14040 and 14044
standards (ISO, 2006a,b). The software packages GEMIS 4.8 (Öko
Institute, 2012) and GaBi v.6 (PE International, 2013) have been
used to model the systems and estimate the impacts.
Three economic indicators are estimated –capital, annualised
and levelised costs –all related to the issue of electricity costs. The
capital costs represent the total construction costs of a power
plant, including land, planning, construction, commissioning and
working capital costs (May and Brennan, 2006). Total annualised
costs are related to the annual costs of operating the system while
levelised or unit costs are the average costs over the lifetime of a
plant expressed per unit of electricity generated (Rubin et al.,
2013). Their estimation is detailed in Section 1 in the Supple-
mentary material.
Sustainability issues and indicators
Sustainability assessment
Environmental
sustainability
assessment
Economic
sustainability
assessment
Social
sustainability
assessment
Multi-criteria decision analysis
Definition of the goal and scope
Results and recommendations
Fig. 1. Methodology for assessing the sustainability of electricity generation.
B. Atilgan, A. Azapagic / Energy Policy 93 (2016) 168–186170
Three social issues pertinent to the electricity sector in Turkey
are evaluated: provision of employment, worker safety and energy
security. For each issue, two relevant indicators have been for-
mulated (Table 2) and estimated using a life cycle approach where
relevant (see Section 1 in the Supplementary material).
Two types of employment are estimated: direct and total. The
former refers to the number of jobs during the construction, op-
eration, maintenance and decommissioning of a power plant. The
total employment is a sum of direct and indirect employment with
the latter relating to the number of jobs in fuel extraction and
processing as well as manufacturing of plant parts.
The safety issues are quantified through the number of worker
injuries and fatalities. The former takes into account the total
number of injuries per unit of electricity generated over the life-
time of an electricity technology and the latter the number of
fatalities in large accidents in the supply chain (Stamford and
Azapagic, 2012).
Finally, energy security is measured via two indicators: im-
ported fossil fuel potentially avoided and diversity of fuel supply.
The former estimates the amount of imported fossil fuels poten-
tially avoided through the utilisation of technologies that do not
rely on imported fossil fuels while the latter evaluates the national
supply diversity based on the Simpson diversity index (Stamford
and Azapagic, 2012).
Transport
Cleaning &
preparation
Mining
Coal
Hydropower, Wind and Geothermal
Waste treatment and disposal
Extraction of primary resources
Extraction Distribution
Treatment &
preparation
Natural gas
Plant construction
Plant decommissioning
Plant operation
Plant construction
Plant decommissioning
Plant operation
Plant construction Plant decommissioning
Plant operation
Fig. 2. The life cycle of the electricity options currently present in Turkey.
Table 2
Environmental, economic and social issues and indicators.
Sustainability aspects Sustainability issues Sustainability indicators Units
Environmental Resource depletion Abiotic resource depletion potential (elements) kg Sb eq./kWh
Abiotic resource depletion potential (fossil fuels) MJ/kWh
Climate change Global warming potential kg CO
2
eq./kWh
Emission to air, water and soil Acidification potential kg SO
2
eq./kWh
Eutrophication potential kg PO
4
eq./kWh
Fresh water aquatic ecotoxicity potential kg DCB
a
eq./kWh
Human toxicity potential kg DCB
a
eq./kWh
Marine aquatic ecotoxicity potential kg DCB
a
eq./kWh
Ozone layer depletion potential kg CFC-11 eq./kWh
Photochemical oxidants creation potential kg C
2
H
4
eq./kWh
Terrestrial ecotoxicity potential kg DCB
a
eq./kWh
Economic Costs Capital costs US$
Total annualised costs US$/year
Levelised costs US$/kWh
Social Provision of employment Direct employment Person-years/TWh
Total employment (directþindirect) Person-years/TWh
Worker safety Injuries No. of injuries/TWh
Fatalities due to large accidents No. of fatalities/TWh
Energy security Imported fossil fuel potentially avoided koe
b
/kWh
Diversity of fuel supply mix Score (0–1)
c
a
DCB: dichlorobenzene.
b
koe: kilogram oil equivalent.
c
A score of 1 represents a diverse fuel supply and a score of 0 indicates an over-reliance on one exporter.
B. Atilgan, A. Azapagic / Energy Policy 93 (2016) 168–186 17 1
2.3. Sustainability assessment: data and assumptions
To evaluate the sustainability of individual electricity options as
well as the overall electricity sector in Turkey, data have been
collected from a variety of sources. The data represent the annual
averages and thus do not account for the variations in the fuel mix
and operational parameters that may happen during the year. The
most complete data set was available for the year 2010 which is
considered here as the base year.
As mentioned in the introduction, the total installed capacity in
that year was 49,524 MW which generated 211,208 GWh (TEIAS,
2012). There were 16 lignite, eight hard coal, 187 gas, 55 reservoir
and 205 run-of-river hydropower, 39 wind and six geothermal
power plants, all of which are considered in this study (see Table 3
and Tables S2-1–S2-7 in the Supplementary material). The con-
tribution of the liquid-fuel power plants to the total generation of
electricity is small (1%) and for simplicity this has been substituted
with the equivalent amount of electricity generated by the gas
power plants. The data on the specific technologies for other re-
newables and waste have not been available. As their contribution
to the total electricity generation is very small (0.2%), they have
been substituted by small reservoir hydropower. Furthermore, the
data on the specific technologies for multi-fuel plants have not
been available either. Thus, the solid-liquid multi-fuel plants have
been substituted by the data for lignite plants and the gas-liquid
plants by gas plants.
The assumptions and data sources for different electricity
technologies for the environmental, economic and social in-
dicators are discussed in the following sections.
2.3.1. Environmental data and assumptions
The inventory data and the assumptions for the power plants
are summarised in Table 4. The background life cycle inventory
data have been sourced largely from Ecoinvent v2.2 (Dones et al.,
2007) but have been adapted as far as possible to Turkey's con-
ditions. Where the appropriate data were not available in Ecoin-
vent or were not detailed enough, other sources have been used,
specifically for hydropower (Flury and Frischknecht, 2012), on-
shore wind (Kouloumpis et al., 2015) and geothermal (PE Inter-
national, 2013). For the latter, only aggregated data for a 30 MW
flash-steam plant have been available so that it has not been
possible to adapt them to Turkish conditions. However, as flash-
steam plants provide two thirds of electricity from geothermal
sources in Turkey (Parlaktuna et al., 2013) and geothermal power
contributes only 0.3% to electricity generation (Table 3), this lim-
itation is not deemed significant.
The size and capacity of the hydropower plants and wind tur-
bines in Ecoinvent differ from the plants in Turkey so that it has
been necessary to scale them up or down. The scaling approach
typically used to estimate the costs of plants with differing capa-
cities (Coulson et al., 1993) has been used for these purposes. This
method takes into account the ‘economies of scale’, whereby lar-
ger plants cost less to build per unit of capacity than smaller in-
stallations. The same analogy has been applied to the environ-
mental impacts, which would also be lower per unit of capacity for
bigger than smaller plants. Thus, the impacts have been scaled
according to the following relationship (Greening and Azapagic,
2013):
⎛
⎝
⎜⎞
⎠
⎟
=× ()
EE C
C1
21 2
1
0.6
where:
E
1
environmental impacts of the larger plant.
E
2
environmental impacts of the smaller plant.
C
1
capacity of the larger plant.
C
2
capacity of the smaller plant.
0.6 ‘six-tenths’scaling factor.
2.3.2. Economic data and assumptions
The cost data used in the analysis correspond to the year 2012
rather than 2010 because of better data availability; thus all costs
are expressed in 2012 US$. However, the 2012 costs have been
applied to the electricity mix in the base year so that the basis of
analysis remains the same as for the other two sustainability as-
pects. The cost data given in Table 5 have been sourced from
Turkey's electricity generation plan (TEIAS, 2013). Specific capital
costs data were not available for different hydropower options;
therefore, the costs of large and small reservoir and run-of-river
hydropower plants have been assumed based on the data from
government reports and academic literature (Lako et al., 2003;
TEIAS, 2013;Schröder et al., 2013;IRENA, 2012;Kucukali and Baris,
2009).
The assumed lifetimes of the power plants are given in Table 4.
The discounting rate of 10% has been applied for the calculation of
the annualised capital costs (TEIAS, 2013). This is congruent with
the discounting rate commonly applied in the electricity sector
and therefore enables more valid comparison to existing studies
(e.g. IEA/NEA (2011,2005) and IEA et al. (2015)).
2.3.3. Social data and assumptions
Direct and indirect employment for each technology has been
estimated by using the employment factors for different life cycle
stages, i.e. construction and installation, manufacturing of plant
parts, operation and maintenance, fuel extraction and processing,
and decommissioning. The employment factors for Turkey have
been calculated based on the employment factors in the OECD
countries (Rutovitz and Harris, 2012) and labour productivity in
Turkey. The latter is estimated by dividing the Gross Domestic
Production (GDP) by the total employment in each life cycle stage.
Thus, the employment factors EF
i
have been estimated for each life
cycle stage according to the following relationship (Yilmaz, 2014):
Table 3
Power plants in Turkey in 2010.
Type of power plant Number
of plants
Installed
capacity
(MW)
Annual
generation
(GWh/year)
Contribution
to generation
(%)
Lignite 16 8140 35,942 17.0
Hard coal
a
8 3751 19,104 9.0
Natural gas 187 18,213 98,144 46.5
Large reservoir hydro-
power
(capacity4500 MW)
8 8459 30,583 14.5
Small reservoir hydro-
power
(capacityo50 0 MW)
47 4608 13,885 6.6
Run-of-river
hydropower
205 2764 7327 3.5
Onshore wind 39 1320 2916 1.4
Geothermal 6 94 668 0.3
Total 47,349 208,569
(49,524)
b
(211,208)
c
a
Hard coal type power plant includes hard coal, imported coal and asphaltite
power plants in Turkey.
b
The total installed capacity in 2010 was 49,524 MW. The difference from the
installed capacity shown in the table is due to multi-fuel, liquid fuel and other
renewable-waste plants not included in the table. However, the total actual in-
stalled has been used to estimate the impacts from electricity generation.
c
The total generation was 211,208 GWh. The difference from the generation
shown in the table is due to liquid fuel and other renewable-waste plants not in-
cluded in the table. However, the total actual electricity generation has been used
to estimate the impacts from electricity mix.
B. Atilgan, A. Azapagic / Energy Policy 93 (2016) 168–186172
Table 4
Assumptions and summary of inventory data.
Coal Gas Hydropower Wind
Mining and processing Mining and processing Plant construction Plant construction
Lignite Imported (see Table 7), Composi-
tion (% vol.)
a
:
Reservoir Onshore
Domestic (see Table 7), open pit and underground mining Lifetime: 150 years
d,f
Lifetime: 40 years for fixed parts and 20
years for moving parts
d
Composition (% w/w): Sulphur: 0.8–4.5%; ash: 19–40%; water: 20–50% C
1
: 94.7–97.3%; Large reservoir
Net heating value (NHV): 7.2–13.9MJ/kg C
2
:1–3.4%; Data based on Ecoinvent
d,g
with average size of 175.6 MW
plant and scaled up to 1057 MW plant
Number of turbine:682
Hard coal C
3
:0.3–0.6%; Data based on the
Domestic and imported (see Table 7), open pit and underground mining C
4
:0.1–0.4%; average size of 2 MW turbine
i
and scaled
down to 1.94 MW turbineComposition (% w/w)
a
: Sulphur: 0.5–0.9%; ash: 7–11%; water: 4–7% C
5þ
: 0.02–0.1%;
Small reservoir
NHV: 27–27.5MJ/kg CO
2
:0.06–0.6%;
Data based on ESU
f
with average size of 95 MW plant and
scaled up to 98 MW plant
Transport
b
N
2
:0.1–4.6%
Transport
b
Lignite NHV: 36.5–40.4 MJ/kg
Construction materials
Power plants adjacent to the mine Leakage during extraction: 0.38%
Run-of-river
Freight train: 200 km
Hard coal Transport
b
Lifetime: 80 years
d,f
Lorry416 tonne: 100 km
Russia: Freight train (4500 km); freight ship (500 km) Pipeline
Data based on ESU
f
with average size of 8.6 MW plant and
scaled up to 13.5 MW plant Turbine
USA: Freight train (1000 km); freight ship (950 0 km) Russia: 5750 km
Freight train: 2000 km
South Africa: Freight train (500 km); freight ship (12,500 km) Iran: 2700 km
Lorry416 tonne: 150 km
Plant construction Azerbaijan: 1150 km
Transport
b
Maintenance
Lifetime: 30 years
c
Nigeria: 4000 km
Construction materials
h
Passenger car: 100 pkm/year
Lignite Other: 4500 km
Freight train: 200 km
Data from Ecoinvent
d
based on average size of the plant of 380 MW (a mix of
500 MW and 100 MW plants in a 70:30 ratio)
Plant construction
Lorry416 tonne: 100 km
Plant operation
Lifetime : 25 years
c
Plant operation
Lubricating oil: 4.31 10
5
kg/kWh
Hard coal Data from Ecoinvent
d
assuming
Reservoir
Data from Ecoinvent
d
based on average size of the plant of 460 MW (a mix of
500 MW and 100 MW plants at 90:10 ratio)
400 MW plant
Large reservoir Plant decommissioning
e
Plant operation
Lubricating oil: 7.0 10
6
kg/kWh Metals: 50% recycled,
Plant operation All plants assumed to be CCGT
with efficiency of 55%
Small reservoir 50% landfilled
Efficiency
Lubricating oil: 3.24 10
8
kg/kWh Concrete: 50% recycled,
Lignite: 29–38%; hard coal: 31–40% Average water use: 3.4 kg/kWh
Run-of-river 50% landfilled
Average water use: 37.3 kg/kWh for lignite; 32.7 kg/kWh for hard coal Plant decommissioning
e
Lubricating oil: 1.22 10
7
kg/kWh Plastics: 20% recycled,
Plant decommissioning
e
Metals: 50% recycled,
Plant decommissioning
e
80% landfilled
Metals: 50% recycled, 50% landfilled 50% landfilled
Metals: 50% recycled,
Concrete: 50% recycled, 50% landfilled Concrete: 50% recycled,
50% landfilled
Plastics: 20% recycled, 80% landfilled 50% landfilled
Concrete: 50% recycled,
Plastics: 20% recycled,
50% landfilled
80% landfilled
Plastics: 20% recycled,
80% landfilled
a
Based on data from different mines and countries.
b
Estimated by using online mapping.
c
Source: TEIAS (2013).
d
Source: Dones et al. (2007).
e
The system has been credited for recycling. The recycling rates are assumed due to a lack of data.
f
Source: Flury and Frischknecht (2012).
g
Source: Bauer and Bolliger (2007).
h
It is assumed that gravel is extracted at the construction site.
i
Source: Kouloumpis et al. (2015).
B. Atilgan, A. Azapagic / Energy Policy 93 (2016) 168–186 17 3
=×
()
EF EF
2
i
GDP
E
GDP
E
i,OECD
OECD
i,OECD
Turkey
i,Turkey
where:
GDP
OECD
gross domestic product for member countries of the
Organization for economic cooperation and development
(OECD) (US$).
GDP
Turkey
gross domestic product for Turkey (US$).
E
i, OECD
employment in the life cycle stage i in the OECD coun-
tries (jobs/MW).
E
i, Turkey
total employment in the life cycle stage i in Turkey
(jobs/MW).
EF
i, OECD
employment factor in the OECD countries for the life
cycle stage i (jobs/MW).
GDP
OECD
/E
i, OECD
labour productivity factors for the OECD for the
life cycle stage i.
GDP
Turkey
/E
i, Turkey
labour productivity factors for Turkey for the
life cycle stage i.
The estimated employment factors for Turkey are presented in
Table 6. Owing to the lack of data, the employment in the de-
commissioning stage is assumed to be 20% of construction em-
ployment. For the lignite fuel cycle, regional employment factors
have been calculated using the data from government and
industrial reports as well as academic literature (Ersin, 2006;WEC,
2011). As most hard coal used in Turkey is imported from the USA,
Russia and South Africa (Table 7), fuel cycle employment factors
were calculated using the employment factors in these countries
(Rutovitz and Harris, 2012).
The worker injuries and fatalities have been estimated using
the worker injury and fatality rates and the number of jobs in each
life cycle stage. The data on injuries and fatalities for the life cycle
stages occurring in Turkey have been sourced from the statistical
yearbook of the Social Security Institution (SSI, 2013). Owing to the
lack of data, the same injury and fatality rates have also been used
for the parts of the life cycle taking place elsewhere. Although this
is a limitation of the study, this assumption is reasonable given
that the majority of the fuels are imported from developing
countries (see Table 7) where safety regulation and practices may
be similar to those in Turkey.
The amount of imported fossil fuel that can potentially be
avoided through the utilisation of technologies that do not rely on
imported fossil fuels is based on the average efficiency of the hard
coal and gas plants (for details see Table 4). The proportions of
national fuel demand supplied domestically and imported in 2010
(see Table 7) have been used to calculate the diversity of the fuel
supply mix.
2.4. Multi-criteria decision analysis
Multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) has been used to in-
tegrate the three aspects of sustainability and help identify the
most sustainable electricity options taking into account different
preferences for the aspects. MCDA helps decision makers to
choose the best option when a wide range of criteria has to be
considered (Azapagic and Perdan, 2005a). There are many types of
MCDA methods; examples include multi-attribute utility theory
(MAUT), multi-attribute value theory (MAVT) and analytical hier-
archy process (AHP). For an overview of MCDA methods, see e.g.
Azapagic and Perdan (2005b) and Wang et al. (2009).
Multi-attribute value theory (MAVT) has been used for these
purposes because it allows a simultaneous consideration of all
three aspects of sustainability, allowing compensation among
them, which is often needed in policy applications (Azapagic and
Perdan, 2005b). In this method, the overall sustainability score for
each alternative is estimated as follows (Azapagic and Perdan,
2005b):
∑
()= () ()
=
va wv a 3
i1
I
ii
Table 5
Costs of power plants in Turkey (TEIAS, 2013)
a
.
Power plant
type
Capital costs
(US$/kW)
Fixed costs
(US$/kW-
year)
Variable costs
(US$ cents/
kWh)
Fuel costs
(US$/t)
b
Lignite 1750 33.7 1.98 25
Hard coal
Domestic 1750 44.3 1.48 75
Imported 1900 53.6 2.03 115
Natural gas 800 5.6 0.7
c
750
Large reservoir 1600 6.0 6.0
d
–
Small reservoir 1800 6.0 6.0
d
–
Run-of-river 2300 6.0 6.0
d
–
Onshore wind 2000 14.0 2.0 –
Geothermal
e
2500 14.0 2.0 –
a
All values in 2012 US$.
b
Gas: US$/1000 N m
3
(standard conditions: 1 atm and 15 °C).
c
Estimated based on two power plants due to lack of data.
d
US$/kW-year.
e
Source: Sener and Aksoy (2007).
Table 6
Employment factors in different sectors in Turkey estimated in this study.
Power plant type Construction and installation (job-
years/MW)
Manufacturing (job-years/MW) Operation and maintenance
(jobs/MW)
Fuel extraction and processing
(jobs/PJ)
Lignite 13.48 7.25 0.18 31.80
Hard coal 13.48 7.25 0.18 21.20
Natural gas 2.98 2.07 0.14 17.00
Large reservoir
a
6.00 1.50 0.30 –
Small reservoir
b
10.50 3.11 0.53 –
Run-of-river
c
15.44 11.39 0.98 –
Onshore wind 4.38 12.63 0.36 –
Geothermal 12.08 8.07 0.71 –
a
Owing to the lack of data, the large hydropower plant employment factors in OECD countries (Rutovitz and Harris, 2012) have been used directly for large reservoir
hydropower plants in Turkey.
b
The employment factors for small reservoir hydropower plants in Turkey have been calculated based on the large hydropower plant employment factors of the OECD
countries (Rutovitz and Harris, 2012) by using the average labour productivity in Turkey.
c
Owing to the lack of specific data for run-of-river hydropower plants, the average employment factors for the construction and operation stages have been assumed
based on the environmental impact assessment reports for different sizes of the run-of-river plants in Turkey (Dokay, 2009;MGS, 2011;Doga, 2011;Topcuoglu, 2011;Cinar,
2011;EN-CEV, 2012;Nazka, 2014;Akya, 2014;Topcuoglu, 2008;Golder Associates, 2008;AK-TEL, 2009).
B. Atilgan, A. Azapagic / Energy Policy 93 (2016) 168–186174
where:
v(a) overall sustainability score of electricity option a.
w
i
weight of importance for decision criterion i (sustainability
indicator or aspect).
v
i
(a) score reflecting the performance of option ɑon criterion i
(sustainability indicator or aspect).
I total number of decision criteria (sustainability indicators or
aspects).
To obtain the overall sustainability score for each electricity
option, the MCDA has been carried out in two stages. First, Eq. (3)
has been used to obtain the scores for each sustainability aspect
(environmental, economic and social), based on the values of the
corresponding sustainability indicators estimated in the sustain-
ability assessment and their weights of importance. In that case,
the decision criteria in Eq. (3) represent the sustainability in-
dicators. In the second stage, the decision criteria are the sus-
tainability aspects and Eq. (3) is applied to estimate the overall
sustainability score of an option using the scores for the sustain-
ability aspects estimated in the first stage and the weights of im-
portance for each aspect.
The MCDA was first performed assuming equal importance of
all the aspects and indicators. This was followed by assuming in
turn a much higher preference for one aspect at a time to find out
how the sustainability performance of different electricity options
may change. Since elicitation of preferences by decision makers
and stakeholders has been outside the scope of the study, poten-
tial preferences have been assumed as part of this work. To test the
robustness of the MCDA results, a sensitivity analysis has been
carried out to determine how the ranking of the technologies
would change with different weighting of the sustainability
aspects.
3. Results and discussion
This section first discusses the results of the environmental
sustainability assessment, followed by the economic and social
assessments. The latter parts of the paper discuss the findings of
the integrated sustainability assessment through MCDA. Further
details on the sustainability assessment results can be found in
Tables S3-1 and S3-2 in the Supplementary material.
3.1. Environmental sustainability assessment
The results of the environmental sustainability assessment are
given in Figs. 3 and 4. The former shows the impacts of each type
of electricity option and the latter the impacts of the Turkish
electricity mix in the base year. They are discussed in turn in the
next sections.
3.1.1. Environmental sustainability of electricity technologies
The results in Fig. 3 suggest that geothermal power is the most
sustainable option for six out of 11 impacts (eutrophication, ozone
layer depletion and all the toxicity categories). Large reservoir
hydropower has the lowest depletion of elements and fossil re-
sources as well as acidification. Run-of-river is the best option for
the global warming potential and small reservoir is the best for
photochemical oxidants, precursors of summer smog. The worst
option overall is lignite with eight impacts higher than for any
other option. Hard coal power has the highest depletion of ele-
ments and the global warming potential while gas has the highest
ozone layer depletion. These results are discussed in more detail
below.
3.1.1.1. Abiotic depletion potential (ADP elements and fossil). As
shown in Fig. 3, hard coal has the highest ADP elements (81
μ
g Sb-
eq./kWh) followed by wind (67
μ
g Sb-eq./kWh). This impact is
primarily due to the use of chromium, copper, molybdenum and
nickel for construction of the plants and coal supply. Large re-
servoir hydropower is the best options for this indicator with a
value of 3
μ
g Sb-eq./kWh.
As expected, the depletion of fossil resources is highest for
fossil-fuel power plants with 15.1 MJ/kWh for lignite, 13.5 MJ/kWh
for hard coal and 8.8 MJ/kWh for gas. Fuel extraction is the
single largest contributor to this impact. By comparison, the de-
pletion of fossil resources for the renewable options is several
orders of magnitude lower, ranging from 0.02 MJ/kWh for small-
reservoir hydro and geothermal power to 0.1 MJ/kWh for wind
electricity.
3.1.1.2. Acidification potential (AP). The lignite life cycle is the worst
option for this indicator, with a value of 10.8 g SO
2
-eq./kWh. AP for
hard coal is around 1.8 times lower (6 g SO
2
-eq./kWh) than for
lignite. The vast majority of this impact is due to the high sulphur
content in lignite and a lack of desulphurisation at some coal
power plants (see Supplementary material, Table S2-1). Large re-
servoir hydropower is best for this environmental impact, with a
value of 3 mg SO
2
-eq./kWh.
3.1.1.3. Eutrophication potential (EP). This impact shows the same
trend as AP: lignite power is the worst option with 11.9 g PO
4
-eq./
kWh, mainly owing to the emissions of phosphates to fresh water,
primarily from mining. Estimated at 2.3 g PO
4
-eq./kWh, EP from
hard coal power is around five times lower than for lignite. By
comparison, geothermal and large reservoir power have EP of
1 and 1.2 mg PO
4
-eq./kWh, respectively.
3.1.1.4. Freshwater aquatic ecotoxicity potential (FAETP). As can be
seen in Fig. 3, the ranking of the options for this environmental
impact is the same as for AP and EP. With FAETP of 2.1 kg DCB-eq./
kWh, lignite is the worst option, predominantly because of the
emissions of metals to freshwater during mining, including nickel,
beryllium, cobalt, vanadium, copper and barium. The value for
hard coal power is estimated at 0.4 kg DCB-eq./kWh, around five
times lower than for lignite. Both values are still several orders of
magnitude higher than for gas and the renewables: for example,
the impact from geothermal power is 0.002 g CO
2
-eq. per kWh.
Table 7
Domestic and imported fuels in Turkey in 2010
a
.
Natural gas
(million m
3
)
Hard coal (mil-
lion tonnes)
Lignite (million
tonnes)
Domestic –0.20 55.89
Imported
Russia 9921 4.45
b
–
Iran 4383 ––
Azerbaijan 2551 ––
Algeria 2205 ––
Nigeria 671 ––
USA –1.4 8 –
South Africa –1.48 –
Other (spot
market)
173 8 ––
Total 21,469 7.61 55.89
a
Own calculations based on various sources.
b
This includes the amount of hard coal imported from Colombia but as there
are no LCA data for the Colombian coal, the LCA impacts from the Russian coal have
been used instead.
B. Atilgan, A. Azapagic / Energy Policy 93 (2016) 168–186 17 5
Fig. 3. Environmental sustainability of electricity technologies in Turkey. [All impacts expressed per kWh of electricity generated. The values shown on top of each bar
represent the total impact after the recycling credits for the plant construction materials have been taken into account. Extraction refers to fuel and includes fuel processing.
Some values have been rounded off and may not correspond exactly to those quoted in the text. ADP: Abiotic depletion of elements; ADP fossil: Abiotic depletion of fossil;
AP: Acidification potential; EP: Eutrophication potential; FAETP: Fresh water aquatic ecotoxicity potential; GWP: Global warming potential; HTTP: Human toxicity potential;
MAETP: Marine aquatic ecotoxicity potential; ODP: Ozone layer depletionpotential; POCP: Photochemical oxidants creation potential; TETP: Terrestrial ecotoxicity potential.]
B. Atilgan, A. Azapagic / Energy Policy 93 (2016) 168–186176
3.1.1.5. Global warming potential (GWP). Small reservoir and run-
of-river hydropower options have the lowest GWP, estimated at
4.2 and 4.1 g CO
2
-eq./kWh, respectively. Wind power is also a re-
latively good option with GWP of 7.3 g CO
2
-eq./kWh. Large re-
servoir emits 8.3 g CO
2
-eq./kWh which is almost two times higher
than for the other hydropower options owing to the emissions of
CO
2
and CH
4
from the degradation of biomass submerged in the
water. Geothermal power is estimated to generate 63 g CO
2
-eq./
kWh which makes it the worst option among the renewables.
However, hard coal is significantly worse than any other option,
with an estimate of 1126 g CO
2
-eq./kWh, followed by lignite with
1062 g CO
2
-eq./kWh and gas with less than half of that (499 g CO
2
-
eq./kWh). For all three fossil fuel options, the majority of GWP is
from fuel combustion. Hard coal has a higher GWP than lignite,
despite the higher efficiency per unit of electricity generated
(Table 4), because of the additional GHG emissions from long-
range transport. The recycling credits are also lower for the hard
coal plants as they are more efficient and need a lower amount of
construction material per unit of electricity generated. The same
applies for the other impacts.
3.1.1.6. Human toxicity potential (HTP). Lignite is the worst option
for this indicator, with a value of 1.4 kg DCB-eq./kWh. This is lar-
gely due to mining, particularly as a result of emissions of sele-
nium, molybdenum, beryllium and barium. The next largest con-
tributor is lignite combustion to generate electricity. The most
sustainable option is geothermal power with HTP of 1 g DCB-eq./
kWh.
3.1.1.7. Marine aquatic ecotoxicity potential (MAETP). As shown in
Fig. 3, lignite is significantly worse than any other option con-
sidered, with MAETP of 6.4 t DCB-eq./kWh, followed by hard coal
with 1.4 t DCB-eq./kWh. The impact from the other options is
several orders of magnitude lower, with geothermal power being
the best option at 0.5 kg DCB-eq./kWh. The main reason for the
high impact from the coal power technologies is the discharge of
heavy metals to water during mining.
3.1.1.8. Ozone layer depletion potential (ODP). With ODP of
92 mg CFC-11-eq./kWh, power from natural gas is environmentally
least sustainable. This is around 12 times the impact of hard coal
and 48 times that of lignite. This is mainly due to transport of fuels
and, in particular, emissions of halons 1211 and 1301 used as fire
suppressants in gas pipelines. The ODP from the renewables is
several orders of magnitude smaller than that of gas (see Fig. 3).
3.1.1.9. Photochemical oxidant creation potential (POCP).
Geothermal and small reservoir hydropower are the most sus-
tainable options with POCP of 1.2 mg C
2
H
4
-eq./kWh. Lignite and
hard coal have the highest estimated values: 0.48 and 0.33 g C
2
H
4
-
eq./kWh, respectively. The large majority of this impact is due to
the emissions of SO
2
,NO
x
and CO from coal combustion.
3.1.1.10. Terrestrial ecotoxicity potential (TETP). Lignite power is
significantly worse than any other option, with an estimated TETP
of 3.9 g DCB-eq./kWh, followed by hard coal with 1.9 g DCB-eq./
kWh. Geothermal power is the best option with 1 mg DCB-eq./
kWh, which is around two orders of magnitude lower than for
wind power (0.68 g DCB-eq./kWh).
3.1.2. Environmental sustainability of the Turkish electricity mix
The environmental impacts of the electricity mix have been
estimated based on the impacts of each technology discussed in
the previous sections and their contribution to the total electricity
generated in the base year (see Fig. 3). The results are summarised
in Fig. 4. For example, the total GWP is estimated at 523 g CO
2
-eq./
kWh which translates to nearly 111 Mt CO
2
-eq. per year, 54% of
which is due to coal and nearly 46% to gas power. Renewable
energy options contribute only 0.4% to the total GWP. Like the
GWP, fossil-fuel based power electricity generation is also re-
sponsible for the majority of other environmental impacts.
As far as we are aware, no other authors have carried out an
evaluation of the environmental sustainability of the Turkish
electricity sector on a life cycle basis. Therefore, comparison of
the results with other works is not possible. Instead, the
25.3
8.0
28.2
22.7
39.0
52.3
26.7
12.2
44.9
19.8
9.9
58.1
5.9
6.1
5.8
9.2
49.0
9.6
3.6
7.3
6.1
9.7
38.9
11.5
5.1
1.7
3.8
8.7
11.6
1.4
4.4
3.3
8.6
51.9
10.4
8.8
26.6
41.1
66.3
28.3
10.8
28.0
8.6
11.5
34.2
6.7
1.7
0.5
1.5
3.8
6.7
0.4
11.5
1.7
7.2
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
ADP elements
[μg Sb-eq.]
ADP fossil
[MJ]
AP x 0.1
[g SO2-eq.]
EP x 0.1
[g PO4-eq.]
FAETP x 0.01
[kg DCB-eq.]
GWP x 0.01
[kg CO2-eq.]
HTP x 0.01
[kg DCB-eq.]
MAETP x 100
[kg DCB-eq.]
ODP
[μg R11-eq.]
POCP x 0.01
[g C2H4-eq.]
TETP x 0.1
[g DCB-eq.]
Turkey UK France Germany Sweden
Fig. 4. Environmental sustainability assessment of electricity in Turkey in comparison to electricity in some European countries. [All impacts expressed per kWh. For impacts
nomenclature, see Fig. 3. LCA data for the other countries are from Ecoinvent (Dones et al., 2007) except for the UK which are from Stamford and Azapagic (2014).]
B. Atilgan, A. Azapagic / Energy Policy 93 (2016) 168–186 17 7
environmental impacts estimated here are compared to those
from electricity generation in some European countries, to provide
context (Fig. 4). The electricity mix in the UK, France, Germany and
Sweden are considered as illustrative examples covering a range of
electricity mixes, two of which share some similarities with the
Turkish grid (Germany and UK) and others are quite different
(France and Sweden). It can be observed from the figure that the
impacts from the electricity mix in Germany are the highest for
five out of 11 impact categories considered, including the GWP.
This is mainly due to a high contribution from lignite and hard coal
(22% each). On the other hand, the AP, MAETP, ODP and POCP are
highest from electricity generation in Turkey. This is mainly due to
the poor quality of lignite in Turkey, lack of air pollution control
systems at some of the plants as well as long-range transport of
imported hard coal and gas. ADP elements from the UK grid is the
highest owing to the higher proportion of offshore wind power in
the electricity mix. Compared to France, the majority of the im-
pacts (apart from ADP elements and fossil) for Turkey are higher
because of the high contribution of nuclear power (75%) in France.
The electricity mixes in the UK and Sweden have lower environ-
mental impacts that in Turkey for 10 out of 11 impacts; the ex-
ception is the depletion of elements which is lower for Turkey
because of the lowest share of wind power.
3.2. Economic sustainability assessment
As mentioned previously, the economic analysis involves esti-
mation of capital, total annualised and levelised costs. The results
reveal that, overall, large reservoir hydropower has the lowest
levelised costs and gas power by far the highest, despite its lowest
capital costs. The coal power options are more expensive than
hydropower and geothermal but cheaper than gas and wind
power in terms of levelised costs. These results are discussed in
more detail in the following sections for both individual technol-
ogies and the Turkish electricity mix.
3.2.1. Capital costs
As indicated in Table 5, at 2500 US$/kW the capital costs are
highest for the geothermal plants (Sener and Aksoy, 2007), fol-
lowed by the run-of-river (2300 US$/kW) and the wind (2000 US
$/kW) power (TEIAS, 2013). Based on these data, the total capital
costs for 49,524 MW of the installed capacity in 2010 have been
estimated here at US$69.3 billion. The majority of this is due to the
hydropower (41%), coal (32%) and gas (23%) plants (Fig. 5). Al-
though the latter have the lowest capital costs, their contribution
to the total costs is still significant because of the high contribution
to the electricity mix (46.5%, see Table 3).
3.2.2. Total annualised costs
Key variables used to calculate the total annualised costs are
capital, fixed, variable and fuel costs (see the Supplementary ma-
terial, Section 2). The total annualised costs are estimated at US
$25.9 bn/year. Fuel costs account for 64% of the total, followed by
the capital costs (28%). The rest is attributable to the variable (5%)
and fixed costs (3%).
Fig. 5 also shows the annualised costs for different types of
power plant. Gas and coal together contribute 87% of the total
annualised costs (62% for gas, 16% for lignite and 9% for hard coal);
this is largely due to the high fuel costs.
The contribution of different cost components to the total costs
varies by technology (Fig. 6). For renewable technologies that have
no fuel costs, such as wind power, the total annualised cost is
mainly due to the capital (79%) and variable costs (16%). By con-
trast, for gas electricity, fuels contribute 88% to the total cost, while
the capital and fixed costs represent only 11% and 1% of total,
respectively.
3.2.3. Levelised costs
The estimated levelised costs per unit of electricity generated
are given in Fig. 7 for different types of plant. The results suggest
that electricity from large reservoir hydro-plants is the cheapest
(48 US$/MWh), followed by geothermal (61 US$/MWh) and small
reservoir (63 US$/MWh). Onshore wind is the most expensive
option (126 US$/MWh) among the renewable electricity technol-
ogies considered in this study. However, the most expensive op-
tion overall is electricity from natural gas, estimated here at
161 US$/MWh. This is due to the high costs of fuel (see the pre-
vious section). The costs of the two coal-based options are close to
each other, estimated at around 115 US$/MWh. It should be noted
that these costs apply for the discount rate of 10%; choosing a
different rate could affect the levelised costs of the different
technologies as well as the cost break down of each technology.
Taking into account the levelised costs for each technology and
their contribution to the mix in the base year gives the unit cost of
15.2
7.1
15.8
13.5
8.5
6.4
2.6
0.2
4.1
2.2
16.1
1.5 0.9 0.7 0.4 0.04
0
2
4
6
8
10
12
14
16
18
Lignite Hard coal Gas Large
reservoir
Small
reservoir
Run-of-river Wind Geothermal
Costs
Total capital cost (bn US$) Total annualised costs (bn US$/yr)
Fig. 5. Estimated capital and total annualised costs from different power technologies in Turkey (billion US$). [Total capital costs for the installed capacity in 2010: 69.3 bn US
$. Total annualised costs: 25.9 bn US$. Billion ¼10
9
.]
B. Atilgan, A. Azapagic / Energy Policy 93 (2016) 168–186178
electricity mix of 123 US$/MWh. For context, the commercial and
industrial prices of electricity in Turkey are 185 and 148 US$/MWh,
respectively (IEA, 2014).
As far as the authors are aware, this is the first time the leve-
lised costs have been reported for Turkey; hence, it is not possible
to compare these findings with previous estimates. However, a
recent report (IEA et al., 2015) provides estimates for wind (84 US
$/MWh), geothermal (121 US$/MWh) and large reservoir hydro-
power (54 US$/MWh) in Turkey. While the latter agree well with
the costs estimated here, the results for the other two options
differ, with the costs of wind power being 50% higher and that of
geothermal twice as low here. This is due to the different meth-
odologies, assumed capital costs, size of the plants and capacity
factors used in the two studies.
It is also not possible to compare the results obtained here with
the same example countries considered in the environmental as-
sessment. Although some estimates exist for some of the technol-
ogies contributing to the electricity generation in these countries, to
our knowledge, the levelised costs for their electricity mixes are not
available. The exception is the UK for which the costs are estimated
at 121 US$/MWh, following a similar methodology as here (Stamford
and Azapagic, 2014). This is quite close to the estimate for Turkey
because of the similar contribution from fossil fuels to the electricity
mix in these two countries. However, the values for levelised costs
are available for some other countries and, as an example, we
compare Turkey to two other developing countries: Mexico and
Nigeria. Their electricity costs are reported at 106 US$/MWh and
111 US$/MWh, respectively, also using the same methodology as in
the current work (Gujba et al., 2010;Santoyo Castelazo, 2012). The
difference in the costs is mainly due to the differing electricity mixes
and plant technologies in these countries. Note that all the costs
discussed in this section refer to the value of US$ in 2012.
3.3. Social sustainability assessment
The social sustainability assessment has been evaluated on the
basis of six indicators discussed below. In summary, run-of-river
hydropower provides the highest life cycle employment of the
eight options considered but has high worker injuries and large-
accident fatalities. However, the latter two are highest for lignite
and hard coal, with the majority of these related to fuel mining.
Large reservoir hydropower provides the lowest life cycle em-
ployment in the supply chain but it is the best option in terms of
worker injuries and fatalities. Being fuel free, renewable options
score highly for the energy security indicators.
As for the other sustainability aspects, this is the first time a
social sustainability assessment has been attempted for the Turk-
ish electricity sector so that the results cannot be compared to
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
70%
80%
90%
100%
Lignite Hard coal Gas Large
reservoir
Small
reservoir
Run-of-river Wind Geothermal
Annualised capital Annual fixed Annual variable Fuel
Fig. 6. Contribution of different costs to the total annualised costs for different electricity technologies.
114 115
161
48
63
91
126
61
123 121
106 111
0
20
40
60
80
100
120
140
160
180
Lignite Hard coal Gas Large
reservoir
Small
reservoir
Run-of-river Wind Geothermal Turkey UK Mexico Nigeria
)hWM
/
$
S
U
(
ts
oc
d
e
s
ile
veL
Fig. 7. Levelised costs of electricity in Turkey in comparison to some other countries.
B. Atilgan, A. Azapagic / Energy Policy 93 (2016) 168–186 17 9
previous studies. Instead, we compare the results to a similar
study in the UK which applied the same methodology (Stamford
and Azapagic, 2014). Comparison with other studies is not mean-
ingful owing to different methodologies.
3.3.1. Direct employment
As explained in Section 2.2, direct employment comprises jobs
provided during the construction, operation, maintenance and
decommissioning of a power plant. The results in Fig. 8 suggest
that run-of river hydropower provides the highest direct em-
ployment, equivalent to 459 person-years/TWh. The next best
option is onshore wind with 256 person-years/TWh, followed by
small reservoir hydropower at 202 person-years/TWh. For this
indicator, gas power is the least sustainable, providing only
56 person-years/TWh. The reason that some of the renewable
power options have such high direct employment per unit of
electricity is due to their low capacity factors.
Overall, electricity generation in Turkey provided 24,632 direct
jobs in 2010 or 117 person-years per TWh. The majority of the
direct employment is from lignite (25%), natural gas (23%) and
run-of-river hydropower (14%) in Turkey.
By comparison, the equivalent value for the UK electricity is
52 person-years/TWh, 35% of which from coal, 25% from gas and
23% from nuclear power (Stamford and Azapagic, 2014). The dif-
ference between the direct employment values for Turkey and the
UK is mainly due to the differences in labour productivity which is
around 1.5 times higher in the UK than in Turkey (OECD, 2015).
3.3.2. Total employment (direct and indirect)
In addition to the direct, total employment also considers in-
direct jobs provided by other activities in the life cycle, such as fuel
extraction and processing and manufacturing of power plant parts.
Like direct employment, run-of-river hydropower also has the
highest total employment (512 person-years/TWh), followed clo-
sely by lignite (509 person-years/TWh); see Fig. 8. Large reservoir
hydropower provides the lowest life cycle employment
(99 person-years/TWh); this is due to its relatively high capacity
factor and lower labour requirements per unit of electrical output.
In total, the Turkish electricity sector provided 56,979 jobs in 2010,
equivalent to 270 person-years per TWh.
Again for context, the total number of jobs associated with
electricity generation in the UK has been estimated at 123 person-
years/TWh (Stamford and Azapagic, 2014). Like direct employment,
this value is lower than in Turkey because of the higher labour
productivity in the UK.
3.3.3. Worker injuries
For every TWh of electricity generated in Turkey, 68 injuries are
caused in the lignite life cycle; hard coal is only slightly better with
50 injuries/TWh (Fig. 9). Around 94% of these occur in mining.
Wind power also has high injury rates (10.4 injuries/TWh), mainly
because of the relatively high employment provision; around 80%
of the injuries occur during maintenance. The best option is large
reservoir hydropower with 0.7 injuries/TWh.
A total of 3700 worker injuries are estimated to occur in the
electricity sector annually in Turkey; this equates to 17 injuries/
TWh. The equivalent rate in the UK is nine times lower (Stamford
and Azapagic, 2014), reflecting much more stringent occupational
health and safety standards.
3.3.4. Large accident risk
The lignite and hard coal power have the highest life cycle
fatality rate of the power options considered here, causing an es-
timated 0.25 and 0.18 fatalities per TWh of electricity generated,
respectively. Around 82% of these occur in mining. An estimated
0.064 fatalities per TWh electricity generated are caused in the
wind power life cycle. Run-of-river has also relatively high fatality
rates (0.04 fatalities/TWh). The reason for this is the higher em-
ployment provision per unit electricity than for the other options.
Large reservoir hydropower is the best option with 0.01 fatalities/
TWh.
On average, 14 fatalities occur every year in large accidents in
the electricity sector in Turkey, particularly in the mining sector,
compared to 3 fatalities in the UK (Stamford and Azapagic, 2014).
This is again due to lax health and safety regulations in Turkey but
also because the mining activity in the UK is low.
3.3.5. Imported fossil fuel potentially avoided
The amount of imported fossil fuel potentially avoided relates
to the amount of imported hard coal and gas that would have to be
combusted to provide an equivalent amount of electricity from
technologies that do not rely on imported fossil fuels, i.e. lignite,
renewable and nuclear power plants. It is estimated that the cur-
rent fleet avoids 72 t of oil equivalent (toe) per GWh or around
15.2 Mtoe per year. This is equivalent roughly to electricity gen-
erated by 85 coal or 150 gas power stations. By comparison,
270
123
0
100
200
300
400
500
600
Lignite Hard coal Gas Large
reservoir
Small
reservoir
Run-of-river Wind Geothermal Turkey UK
Employment (jobs-years/TWh)
Construction and installation Operation and maintenance Decommissioning
Manufacturing Fuel extraction and processing
509
391
198
99
209
512 485
228
Fig. 8. Direct and total employment provided by different electricity options and the Turkish electricity mix. [Direct employment: construction, operation, maintenance and
decommissioning. Indirect employment: manufacturing and fuel extraction and processing.]
B. Atilgan, A. Azapagic / Energy Policy 93 (2016) 168–186180
50.6 toe/GWh or 19 Mtoe/year of fossil fuel are avoided in the UK
(Stamford and Azapagic, 2014). The differences are mainly due to
the differing electricity mixes and power plant efficiencies in the
two countries.
3.3.6. Diversity of fuel supply mix
The diversity of Turkish fuel supply has been calculated using
Simpson's Diversity Index (see the Supplementary material, Sec-
tion 2). The score for gas supply is estimated at 0.56 and for hard
coal at 0.57. Therefore, the diversity of fuel supply is low as a result
of high reliance on imports from Russia, which in 2010 supplied
58% of hard coal and 46% of gas used in Turkey. The total diversity
index for the Turkish electricity mix is equal to 0.75. This is lower
than 0.82 estimated for the UK (Stamford and Azapagic, 2014)
mainly because of the high reliance of Turkey on imports from
Russia.
3.4. Multi-criteria decision analysis
As discussed in the previous sections, different electricity op-
tions have differing advantages and disadvantages so that identi-
fying the most sustainable among them is not easy. Therefore,
MCDA has been used to aid that process using Web-HIPRE V1.22
software and the MAVT method (Mustajoki and Hämäläinen,
2000). The MCDA decision tree can be found in the Supplementary
material (Fig. S4-1).
First an equal importance for all the sustainability aspects has
been assumed, assigning the same weighting to each (w
i
¼0.33),
followed by assuming in turn a much higher (five times) im-
portance of environmental, economic and social aspects to test the
robustness of the outcomes. Given the different number of in-
dicators for each sustainability aspect and to avoid bias, the
weights for the indicators have been assigned as follows:
11 environmental indicators: w
i
¼1/11¼0.09;
3 economic indicators: w
i
¼1/3¼0.33; and
6 social indicators: w
i
¼1/6¼0.167.
The MCDA results are discussed in the following section. Note
that the option with the highest total score is considered most
sustainable.
3.4.1. Equal preferences for the sustainability criteria
The sustainability scores for each option estimated using Eq. (3)
are displayed in Fig. 10; further details can be found in the Sup-
plementary material, Figs. S4-2 and S4-3. As indicated in the
figures, hydropower is most sustainable with each hydro tech-
nology scoring around 0.83. Wind and geothermal follow closely
with 0.76. All the renewables perform similarly well on the en-
vironmental sustainability but there is a greater difference be-
tween them for the other two aspects. From the economic per-
spective, large reservoir is the best option and wind the worst.
However, the opposite is true for the social sustainability.
Lignite power is the least sustainable technology overall, scor-
ing only 0.42, largely owing to a poor environmental performance.
However, it scores most highly for the social sustainability among
the fossil options (0.18), followed closely by gas power (0.12). On
the other hand, gas is the least sustainable economically but most
sustainable environmentally among the fossil-fuel technologies.
A sensitivity analysis suggests that the weight on the en-
vironmental aspect would have to change significantly (from 0.33
to 0.24) to incur a change in the technology ranking (Supple-
mentary material, Fig. S4-3a). In that case, hard coal electricity
would become the worst option, after gas and lignite. The ranking
of the renewable options would remain the same.
For the economic aspect, the rank order of the fossil fuel op-
tions would change if the weighting on this aspect doubled, from
the current 0.33 to 0.51. In that case, gas power would be the worst
option, after lignite and hard coal. Moreover, the ranking of the
hydropower options would change, with large reservoir becoming
the best option, followed by small reservoir and run-of-river hy-
dropower (see Fig. S4-3b in the Supplementary material).
An increase in the weighting for the social aspect would be
needed from 0.33 to 0.57 for the ranking of the options to change
(Supplementary material, Fig. S4-3c), in which case wind power
would be the third preferred option, after run-of-river and small
reservoir hydropower. The ranking of fossil fuel options would also
change and hard coal would become the least favourable option.
3.4.2. Different preferences for the sustainability criteria
To find out how the ranking of the options might change with
different preferences for the sustainability aspects, it has been
assumed in turn that each aspect is more important than the other
two. For these purposes, an extreme (arbitrary) importance of five
times (w
i
¼0.71) has been considered. The weights for the sus-
tainability indicators remain the same as before. The results are
presented in Fig. 11.
If the environmental aspect is considered most important
(Fig. 11a), hydropower technologies are still most sustainable, each
scoring around 0.93. The next best option is geothermal power
(0.85), followed by wind electricity (0.84). Lignite power is the
worst option with a score of 0.27. The sensitivity analysis suggests
68.2
50.1
1.5 0.7 1.6
5.1
10.4
3.2
17
1.8
0.25
0.18
0.01 0.01 0.01
0.04
0.06
0.03
0.07
0.01
0
0.1
0.2
0.3
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
Lignite Hard coal Gas Large
reservoir
Small
reservoir
Run-of-river Wind Geothermal Turkey UK
Fatalities/TWh
Injuries/TWh
Injuries Fatalities
Fig. 9. Worker injuries and large-accident fatalities for different electricity technologies and the overall electricity mix.
B. Atilgan, A. Azapagic / Energy Policy 93 (2016) 168–186 18 1
that the ranking of the renewables is robust over the whole range
of the weighting (0-1) and only changes for the fossil-fuel options
at w
i
¼0.14, in which case lignite becomes the best and gas the
worst option (see Figure S4-4 in the Supplementary material).
Assuming that the economic aspect is five time more important
than the other two (Fig. 11b), large reservoir hydropower emerges
as the most sustainable option (0.82). Small reservoir hydropower
is ranked second best (0.78), followed by geothermal (0.69), run-
of-river (0.68) and wind power (0.63). Gas power is least sus-
tainable scoring 0.4, largely because of its high levelised costs. The
ranking of the options would change if the weighting on the
economic aspect changed from the current 0.71–0.47 (see Fig. S4-5
in the Supplementary material). In that case, lignite would become
the least favourable option.
When the social aspect is the priority, run-of-river hydropower
is a clear winner, scoring 0.91 (Fig. 11c). This is mainly due to its
good social performance, compared to other technologies. Wind
power is ranked second with the score of 0.81, followed by small
reservoir (0.79), geothermal (0.76) and large reservoir hydropower
(0.75). Hard coal power is now the least sustainable alternative,
scoring only 0.32, followed by gas (0.42) and lignite (0.49). The
sensitivity analysis suggests that this ranking would change if the
importance of the social aspect dropped significantly, from 0.71 to
0.31 (Fig. S4-6). In that case, large reservoir hydropower would
become the best and lignite the worst alternative.
3.4.3. Summary of the MCDA outcomes
As discussed in the previous sections, the ranking of the elec-
tricity options varies with the weights of importance placed on the
sustainability aspects. To summarise the results and help identify
the most sustainable option(s), simple ranking has been used with
the most sustainable technology assigned a score of 1, the next
best a 2, etc., up to 8 which denotes the least sustainable option.
As indicated, in Table 8, hydropower technologies are most
sustainable if all the aspects are considered equally important as
well as when the highest priority is given to the environment.
Large reservoir remains the best option if the economic aspect is
most important but falls to the fifth place if the social impacts are
prioritised, in which case run-of-river is ranked first. Geothermal
power appears to be slightly better than wind for most cases,
except for the high preference for the social criteria, in which case
wind is the second best option overall, after run-of-river.
The fossil-fuel options are the least sustainable, with gas power
being the best and lignite the worst, if all the aspects are con-
sidered equally important and if the priority is given to the en-
vironment. However, gas becomes the least sustainable option if
the economic sustainability is considered most important. When
the social aspect is prioritised, hard coal is the worst option.
4. Conclusions and policy implications
As a developing country, it is important for Turkey to evaluate
the sustainability of its energy sector to help identify and imple-
ment the most sustainable options for the future. In an attempt to
contribute towards this goal, this paper presents for the first time
an integrated sustainability assessment of the electricity sector in
Turkey, considering all the power plants and electricity technolo-
gies currently operating in the country. Taking a life cycle ap-
proach, each technology has been assessed on 20 sustainability
indicators (11 environmental, three economic and six social).
These results have been used to evaluate the overall sustainability
of the whole electricity sector.
The findings at the sectoral level indicate that fossil-fuel op-
tions are responsible for the majority (88–99.9%) of the environ-
mental impacts associated with electricity generation in Turkey.
The results from the economic assessment suggest that the total
capital costs are US$69.3 billion, with hydropower contributing
the majority (43%), followed by coal (31%) and gas (22%) power
plants. The annualised costs are estimated at US$25.9 billion/year
and levelised costs at 123 US$/MWh. The evaluation of social
sustainability indicates that the electricity sector provides around
57,000 jobs. Around 3700 worker injuries and 15 fatalities are
estimated to occur in the supply chain annually. The energy se-
curity is low because of a reliance on imported fuels, with the
diversity of fuel supply index equal to 0.75. On the other hand, the
high contribution of hydropower and lignite in the electricity mix
helps to avoid the use of 15 Mtoe of imported fossil fuels per year,
equivalent to electricity generated by 85 coal or 150 gas power
stations.
Comparing the specific technologies, lignite power is the least
environmentally sustainable for eight out of 11 environmental
impacts. It has the highest fossil fuel depletion, acidification, eu-
trophication, photochemical smog and all the toxicity-related
0.06
0.17
0.25
0.33 0.33 0.32 0.30 0.31
0.18
0.18
0.11
0.27 0.25
0.19 0.18 0.21
0.13
0.08
0.12
0.23 0.26
0.32
0.28 0.25
0.0
0.1
0.2
0.3
0.4
0.5
0.6
0.7
0.8
0.9
Lignite Hard coal Gas Large
resorvoir
Small
reservoir
Run-of-river Wind Geothermal
Sustainability score
Environmental Economic Social
Fig. 10. Ranking of the electricity options with equal weights on the environmental, economic and social aspects. (a) The environmental aspect five times more important
than the economic and social. (b) The economic aspect five times more important than the environmental and social. (c) The social aspect five times more important than the
environmental and economic.
B. Atilgan, A. Azapagic / Energy Policy 93 (2016) 168–186182
b) The economic aspect five times more important than the environmental and social
c) The social aspect five times more important than the environmental and economic
0.02 0.07 0.11 0.14 0.14 0.14 0.13 0.13
0.38
0.39 0.24
0.58 0.53
0.40 0.38 0.45
0.05
0.04
0.05
0.10
0.11
0.14
0.12
0.11
0.0
0.2
0.4
0.6
0.8
1.0
1.2
Lignite Hard coal Gas Large
resorvoir
Small
reservoir
Run-of-river Wind Geothermal
Sustainability score
Environmental Economic Social
0.02 0.07 0.11 0.14 0.14 0.14 0.13 0.13
0.08
0.08 0.05
0.12 0.11 0.08 0.08 0.09
0.27 0.18
0.26
0.49 0.55
0.69
0.60 0.53
0.0
0.2
0.4
0.6
0.8
1.0
1.2
Lignite Hard coal Gas Large
resorvoir
Small
reservoir
Run-of-river Wind Geothermal
Sustainability score
Environmental Economic Social
a) The environmental aspect five times more important than the economic and social
0.12
0.36
0.53
0.71 0.70 0.69 0.65 0.66
0.08
0.08
0.05
0.12 0.11 0.08
0.08 0.09
0.05
0.04
0.05
0.10 0.11 0.14
0.12 0.11
0.0
0.1
0.2
0.3
0.4
0.5
0.6
0.7
0.8
0.9
1.0
Lignite Hard coal Gas Large
resorvoir
Small
reservoir
Run-of-river Wind Geothermal
Sustainability score
Environmental Economic Social
Fig. 11. Ranking of the electricity options with different preferences for the sustainability aspects. (a) The environmental aspect five times more important than the
economic and social. (b) The economic aspect five times more important than the environmental and social. (c) The social aspect five times more important than the
environmental and economic.
B. Atilgan, A. Azapagic / Energy Policy 93 (2016) 168–186 18 3
impacts. As a domestic source, lignite scores highly for the energy
security. Hard coal power has the highest abiotic depletion of
elements and global warming potential. Gas power is the worst
option for ozone layer depletion, life cycle employment and le-
velised costs; however, it has the lowest capital costs. Large re-
servoir hydropower is the most sustainable in terms of depletion
of elements and fossil resources as well as acidification, and is the
second best for a further six environmental indicators. Moreover, it
has the lowest levelised costs and worker injuries and fatalities.
Environmentally, small reservoir hydropower has relatively low
impacts and is comparable with large reservoir hydropower.
However, both large and small reservoir hydropower options
provide lower total employment than lignite, hard coal, run-of-
river, wind and geothermal power. Run-of-river hydropower is the
most sustainable option for the global warming potential and
provides the highest employment but it has high capital costs.
Wind power is significantly cheaper than gas per unit of electricity
generated, although still higher than the other options considered
here. Geothermal power has six environmental impacts lower
than any other option. It only performs badly for acidification
because of air emissions of hydrogen sulphide. Geothermal power
is also the best option for the total annualised costs, but has the
highest capital costs. Being fuel free, all renewable options score
highly for the energy security indicators.
Given these trade-offs, the choice of the most sustainable op-
tions will depend on stakeholder views on the importance of each
sustainability aspect. Therefore multi-criteria decision analysis has
been carried out to determine which technologies are sustainable
for electricity generation in Turkey. The results reveal that, for all
the preferences considered, hydropower emerges as the most
sustainable followed by geothermal and wind electricity. Fossil
fuel power is the least sustainable. Therefore, the results of this
study show clearly that reducing the share of fossil fuels in the
electricity mix would not only reduce significantly the environ-
mental impacts, but also the costs, injuries and fatalities from
electricity generation in Turkey, while also improving energy se-
curity. For example, the global warming potential of fossil-fuels
electricity is around 270 times higher than for renewable elec-
tricity, despite the fossil-based plants generating only 2.7 times
more electricity. Gas and coal electricity together contribute 87% of
the annualised costs and coal has the highest life cycle worker
injuries and fatalities.
Based on the results from this work, the following policy re-
commendations can be made to improve the sustainability of the
electricity sector in Turkey:
Current energy policy in Turkey is mainly driven by the need to
improve energy security and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
To avoid solving one issue at the expense of another, the gov-
ernment should consider wider environmental, economic and
social impacts when planning a sustainability strategy for the
electricity sector. This will help to make more sustainable de-
cisions for the future.
The government should adopt a life cycle approach in decision
and policy making. This will help to identify hot spots and op-
portunities for reducing the environmental, economic and so-
cial impacts across the whole electricity supply chains.
A techno-economic feasibility assessment of all energy sources
available in Turkey should be carried out.
The results of this study quantify for the first time the sig-
nificant improvements in the sustainability of the electricity
sector in Turkey that would be achieved if the share of fossil
power in the electricity mix was reduced. Therefore, future
policies should be oriented towards reducing the contribution
of fossil fuels to electricity generation.
The government's current policy is aimed at increasing elec-
tricity generation from lignite to improve the security of supply.
The results of this work demonstrate that electricity from lignite
is the least sustainable option. The only exception to this is if the
economic aspect is considered most important, in which case it
becomes a middle ranking option. Therefore, if the main energy
driver is energy security, the sustainability performance of the
existing lignite power plants should be improved.
More efficient fossil fuel electricity technologies should be de-
ployed in preference to conventional fossil fuel options. This
will help to reduce the environmental impacts, operational
costs and fatalities and injuries, while improving energy se-
curity. However, the capital costs will increase because of a
higher investment needed for the advanced fossil fuel
technologies.
Turkey has a significant potential for a variety of renewable
energy resources, including solar, wind, geothermal, bioenergy
and hydropower. A greater penetration of renewable electricity
sources into the grid as an alternative to fossil fuels is important
for Turkey to reduce the dependence on imported fuels, im-
prove the security of supply and reduce the environmental
impacts from the electricity sector. Therefore, the government
should encourage and possibly incentivise increasing the share
of renewables in the electricity mix as well as diversifying the
portfolio of options to include offshore wind and solar power.
However, renewable power options should be chosen with care.
For example, increasing the proportion of wind power in the
electricity mix would increase depletion of elements while a
higher share of geothermal power would increase acidification.
As mentioned earlier, these trade-offs should be considered
carefully to avoid solving one problem at the expense of
another.
Hydropower is well established in Turkey and has a large po-
tential for further deployment. Many hydropower plants are
currently under construction or in the planning stage. While
this option has been found the most sustainable in this work,
there are social issues that must be addressed, such as public
acceptability of large reservoir power plants and how they affect
water supply in the neighbouring countries. The government
should consider these and other social aspects judiciously be-
fore making plans for further development of hydropower in
Turkey.
The government should support research into environmental im-
provements of electricity technologies as well as improving legis-
lation to limit environmental impacts from electricity generation.
This work has focused on the current electricity mix in Turkey
and, by definition, has considered a limited number of technolo-
gies. The results are also subject to uncertainty due to the data
limitations. Further improvements to the data could be made
through the use of more regionally-specific and recent data, as
well as more complete economic and social data. For a future
Table 8
Sustainability ranking of the electricity options with different weights on the en-
vironmental, economic and social aspects.
Technology Equal weights Five times more important at a time
Environmental Economic Social
Lignite 8 8 7 6
Hard coal 7 7 6 8
Gas 6 6 8 7
Large reservoir 1 ¼1¼15
Small reservoir 1¼1¼23
Run-of-river 1¼1¼41
Wind 5 5 5 2
Geothermal 4 4 3 4
B. Atilgan, A. Azapagic / Energy Policy 93 (2016) 168–186184
sustainable development of the electricity sector, further research
is needed to evaluate the life cycle sustainability of other options
that could be deployed in the country in the medium to long
terms, including solar, bioenergy and nuclear power. This is the
subject of a forthcoming paper by the authors.
Acknowledgements
This work was funded by the Republic of Turkey Ministry of
National Education and the UK Engineering and Physical Sciences
Research Council, EPSRC (Grant no. EP/K011820/1). This funding is
gratefully acknowledged.
Appendix A. Supplementary material
Supplementary data associated with this article can be found in
the online version at http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.enpol.2016.02.055.
References
Acar, S., Kitson, L., Bridle, R., 2015. Subsidies to coal and renewable energy in Tur-
key. Int. Inst. Sustain. Dev.
AK-TEL, 2009. Ikiler HES Proje Tanitim Raporu. Anadolu Elektrik Uretim, Ankara,
Turkey.
Akya, 2014. Gelen Regulatoru ve HES Nihai Cevresel Etki Degerlendirme Raporu.
Ulusal Elektrik Uretim, Ankara, Turkey.
Azapagic, A., Perdan, S., 2005a. An integrated sustainability decision-support fra-
mework Part I: problem structuring. Int. J. Sustain. Dev. World Ecol. 12 (2),
98–111.
Azapagic, A., Perdan, S., 2005b. An integrated sustainability decision-support fra-
mework Part II: problem analysis. Int. J. Sustain. Dev. World Ecol. 12 (2),
112 –131.
Bauer, C., Bolliger, R., 2007. Ecoinvent Report: Wasserkraft. Swiss Centre for Life
Cycle Inventories, Dübendorf, Switzerland.
Chatzimouratidis, A.I., Pilavachi, P.A., 2009. Technological, economic and sustain-
ability evaluation of power plants using the analytic hierarchy process. Energy
Policy 37 (3), 778–787.
Cinar, 2011. Balikli I-II-III Regulatorleri ve HES Projesi Nihai Cevresel Etki De-
gerlendirme Raporu. Assu Elektrik Uretim, Ankara, Turkey.
Coulson, J.M., Sinnott, R.K., Richardson, J.F., 1993. Coulson & Richardson’s Chemical
Engineering. Butterworth Heinemann Ltd., Oxford, Boston.
Doga, 2011. Onur Regulatoru ve HES Projesi Nihai Cevresel Etki Degerlendirme
Raporu. Temmuz Elektrik Uretim, Ankara, Turkey.
Dokay, 2009. YamanlıII Hidroelektrik Santralıve Malzeme OcaklarıProjesi Cevresel
Etki Degerlendirme Raporu. ENERJISA, Ankara, Turkey.
Dones, R., Bauer, C., Bolliger, R., Burger, B., Faist Emmenegger, M., Frischknecht, R.,
Heck, T., Jungbluth, N., Röder, A., Tuchschmid, M., 2007. Ecoinvent Report: Life
Cycle Inventories of Energy Systems: Results for Current Systems in Switzer-
land and Other UCTE Countries. Swiss Centre for Life Cycle Inventories, Dü-
bendorf, Switzerland.
EN-CEV, 2012. Orta Regulatoru ve HES Projesi Nihai Cevresel Etki Degerlendirme
Raporu. Balsu Elektrik Uretim, Ankara.
Ersin, M., 2006. Turkiye’de Linyit Komurlerinin Enerji Kaynagi Olarak Onemi
(Master Thesis). Sosyal Bilimler Enstitüsü Cografya Anabilim Dali, Istanbul
Universitesi.
EUAS, 2011. Annual Report Ankara. Turkish Electricity Generation Company.
Evans, A., Strezov, V., Evans, T.J., 2009. Assessment of sustainability indicators for
renewable energy technologies. Renew. Sustain. Energy Rev. 13 (5), 1082–1088.
Flury, K., Frischknecht, R., 2012. Life Cycle Inventories of Hydroelectric Power
Generation. ESU Database. Öko-Institute e.V., Uster.
Genoud, S., Lesourd, J.B., 2009. Characterization of sustainable development in-
dicators for various power generation technologies. Int. J. Gr. Energy 6 (3),
257–267.
Golder Associates, 2008. Cambasi Regulatoru, ve Hidroelektrik Santrali Projesi Proje
Tanitim Dosyasi. ENERJISA, Ankara, Turkey.
Greening, B., Azapagic, A., 2013. Environmental impacts of micro-wind turbines and
their potential to contribute to UK climate change targets. Energy 59, 454–466.
Guinée, J.B., Gorrée, M., Heijungs, R., Huppes, G., Kleijn, R., Koning, A., 2001. Life
Cycle Assessment: an Operational Guide to the ISO Standards. Ministry of
Housing, Spatial Planning and Environment (VROM) and Centre of Environ-
mental Science (CML). Kluwer Academic Publishers, Den Haag and Leiden, The
Netherlands.
Guinée, J.B., Heijungs, R., Huppes, G., Zamagni, A., Masoni, P., Buonamici, R., Ekvall,
T., Rydberg, T., 2011. Life cycle assessment: past, present, and future. Environ.
Sci. Technol. 45 (1), 90–96.
Gujba, H., Mulugetta, Y., Azapagic, A., 2010. Environmental and economic appraisal
of power generation capacity expansion plan in Nigeria. Energy Policy 38 (10),
5636–5652.
Hirschberg, S., Dones, R., Heck, T., Burgherr, P., Schenler, W., Bauer, C., 2004. Sus-
tainability of electricity supply technologies under German conditions: A
comparative evaluation, Comprehensive Assessment of Energy Systems. Paul
Scherrer Institut, Switzerland.
IAEA, 2005. Energy Indicators for Sustainable Development: Guidelines and
Methodologies. International Atomic Energy Agency, Vienna.
IEA, NEA, OECD, 2015. Projected Costs of Generating Electricity. International En-
ergy Agency, Nuclear Energy Agency and Organisation for Economic and Co-
operation and Development, Paris.
IEA, 2014. Electricity Information 2014. International Energy Agency, Paris.
IEA/NEA, 2005. Projected Costs of Generating Electricity. International Energy
Agency and Nuclear Energy Agency, Paris.
IEA/NEA, 2011. Projected Costs of Generating Electricity. International Energy
Agency and Nuclear Energy Agency, Paris.
IRENA, 2012. Hydropower. Renewable Energy Technologies: Cost Analysis Series.
International Renewable Energy Agency, Germany.
ISO, 2006a. Life Cycle assessment-principles and Framework. International Stan-
dard Organization, Geneva, Switzerland.
ISO, 2006b. Life Cycle Assessment-requirements and Guidelines. International
Standard Organization, Geneva, Switzerland.
Jeswani, H.K., Gujba, H., Azapagic, A., 2011. Assessing options for electricity gen-
eration from biomass on a life cycle basis: environmental and economic eva-
luation. Waste Biomass Valoriz. 2 (1), 33–42.
Kannan, R., Leong, K.C., Osman, R., Ho, H.K., 2007. Life cycle energy, emissions and
cost inventory of power generation technologies in Singapore. Renew. Sustain.
Energy Rev. 11 (4), 702–715.
Kaygusuz, K., 2011. The paradigm of sustainability in Turkey's energy sector. Energy
Sources Part B: Econ. Plan. Policy 6 (1), 83–95.
Kouloumpis, V., Stamford, L., Azapagic, A., 2015. Decarbonising electricity supply: is
climate change mitigation going to be carried out at the expense of other en-
vironmental impacts? Sustain. Prod. Consum. 1, 1–21.
Kucukali, S., Baris, K., 2009. Assessment of small hydropower (SHP) development in
Turkey: laws, regulations and EU policy perspective. Energy Policy 37 (10),
3872–3879.
Lako, P., Eder, H., Noord, M.D., Reisinger, H., 2003. Hydropower Development with a
Focus on Asia and Western Europe. Overview in the Framework of VLEEM 2.
ECN and Verbundplan, The Netherlands.
Maxim, A., 2014. Sustainability assessment of electricity generation technologies
using weighted multi-criteria decision analysis. Energy Policy 65 (0), 284–297.
May, J.R., Brennan, D.J., 2006. Sustainability assessment of Australian electricity
generation. Process Saf. Environ. Prot. 84 (2), 131–142.
MENR, 2009. Electricity Energy Market and Supply Security Strategy. The Ministry
of Energy and Natural Resources, Ankara.
MGS, 2011. Samatlar Regulatoru, HES ve Malzeme Ocagi Projesi Nihai Cevresel Etki
Degerlendirme Raporu. RAK Elektrik Uretim, Ankara, Turkey.
Mustajoki, J., Hämäläinen, R.P., 2000. Web-HIPRE: global decision support by value
tree and AHP analysis. INFOR 38 (3), 208–220.
Nazka, 2014. Cakirlar HES Kapasite Artisi Proje Tanitim Raporu. Anadolu Elektrik
Uretim, Ankara, Turkey.
OECD, 2015. OECD. Stat, (Database). Available from: 〈http://stats.oecd.org/Index.
aspx?DatasetCode¼LEVEL〉.
Onat, N., Bayar, H., 2010. The sustainability indicators of power production systems.
Renew. Sustain. Energy Rev. 14 (9), 3108–3115.
Parlaktuna, M., Mertoglu, O., Simsek, S., Paksoy, H., Basarir, N., 2013. Geothermal
Country Update Report of Turkey (2010–2013). 2013. European Geothermal
Congress, Pisa, Italy.
PE International, 2013. GaBi Version 6. Stuttgart, Echterdingen.
Perdan, S., 2011. The concept of sustainable development and its practical im-
plications. Chapter 1. In: Azapagic, A., Perdan, S. (Eds.), Sustainable Develop-
ment in Practice. John Wiley & Sons, Chichester.
Rubin, E.S., Booras, G., Davison, J., Ekstrom, C., Matuszewski, M., McCoy, S., Short, C.,
2013. Toward a Common Method of Cost Estimation for CO
2
Capture and Sto-
rage at Fossil Fuel Power Plants. Global CCS Institute, Melbourne.
Rutovitz, J., Harris, S., 2012. Calculating Global Energy Sector Jobs: 2012 Metho-
dology. Institute for Sustainable Futures, UTS, Sydney.
Santoyo Castelazo, E., 2012. Sustainability Assessment of Electricity Options for
Mexico: Current Situation and Future Scenarios. The University of Manchester,
Manchester.
Santoyo-Castelazo, E., Azapagic, A., 2014. Sustainability assessment of energy sys-
tems: Integrating environmental, economic and social aspects. J. Clea. Prod. 80
(0), 119–138.
Schröder, A., Kunz, F., Meiss, J., Mendelevitch, R., Hirschhausen, C. v, 2013. Current
and Prospective Costs of Electricity Generation until 2050. Deutsches Institut
für Wirtschaftsforschung (DIW), Berlin.
Sener, A.C., Aksoy, N., 2007. Yenilenebilir Enerji Kaynaklari Maliyet Analizi Ve
Surdurulebilir YEK Uygulamalari. Jeotermal Enerji Semineri, Diyarbakir/Turkey.
Serencam, H., Serencam, U., 2013. Toward a sustainable energy future in Turkey: an
environmental perspective. Renew. Sustain. Energy Rev. 27 (0), 325–333.
SSI, 2013. Statistical Yearbook. Republic of Turkey Social Security Institution, Ankara
http://www.sgk.gov.tr/wps/portal/tr/kurumsal/istatistikler/sgk_istatistik_
yilliklari.
Stamford, L., Azapagic, A., 2012. Life cycle sustainability assessment of electricity
options for the UK. Int. J. Energy Res. 36 (14), 1263–1290.
B. Atilgan, A. Azapagic / Energy Policy 93 (2016) 168–186 18 5
Stamford, L., Azapagic, A., 2014. Life cycle sustainability assessment of UK electricity
scenarios to 2070. Energy Sustain. Dev. 23, 194–211.
TEIAS, 2012. Electricity Generation and Transmission Statistics of Turkey. Turkish
Electricity Transmission Corporation, Ankara http://www.teias.gov.tr/TurkiyeE
lektrikIstatistikleri.aspx.
TEIAS, 2013. Turkiye Elektrik Enerjisi Uretim Planlama Calismasi (2012–2030).
Turkish Electricity Transmission Corporation, Research Planning and Co-
ordination Department, Ankara, Turkey.
Topcuoglu, 2008. Pasalar Regulatoru, HES ve Malzeme Ocagi Projesi Nihai Cevresel
Etki Degerlendirme Raporu. RAK Elektrik Uretim, Ankara, Turkey.
Topcuoglu, 2011. Taslikaya Regulatoru ve HES Projesi Nihai Cevresel Etki De-
gerlendirme Raporu. Eyner Elektrik Uretim, Ankara, Turkey.
UNEP/SETAC, 2011. Towards a Life Cycle Sustainability Assessment: Making a In-
formed Choices on Products. UNEP/SETAC Life Cycle Initiative, Paris.
Wang, J.J., Jing, Y.Y., Zhang, C.F., Zhao, J.H., 2009. Review on multi-criteria decision
analysis aid in sustainable energy decision-making. Renew. Sustain. Energy Rev.
13 (9), 2263–2278.
WCED, 1987. The Report of World Commission on Environment and Development.
Oxford Univ. Press: The United Nations Department of Economic and Social
Affairs, Oxford.
WEC, 2011. Turkiye Enerji Raporu. World Energy Council, Turkish National Com-
mittee, Ankara.
Yilmaz, S.A., 2014. Yesil Isler ve Turkiye’de Yenilenebilir Enerji Alandaki Potansiyeli.
Sosyal Sektorler ve Koordinasyon Genel Mudurlugu, Kalkinma Bakanligi,
Ankara.
Zamagni, A., Pesonen, H.-L., Swarr, T., 2013. From LCA to life cycle sustainability
assessment: concept, practice and future directions. Int. J. Life Cycle Assess. 18
(9), 1637–1641.
B. Atilgan, A. Azapagic / Energy Policy 93 (2016) 168–186186
