COPENHAGEN, Denmark

Türkiye and Denmark have entered into the third and final stage of an energy cooperation agreement to improve trade ties and climate cooperation, an energy advisor at the Centre for Global Cooperation of the Danish Energy Agency (DEA) said Tuesday.

Speaking during a study visit of Turkish officials and entrepreneurs to Denmark as part of the BEST For Energy (Boosting Effective and Sustainable Transformation for Energy) project, Susana Paardekooper, the program manager for the Strategic Sector Cooperation with Türkiye, said the application process for the third phase of the program for the next four years had been opened.

The program, which was initiated in 2017, aims to support the long-term development of the energy system from a regulatory perspective in Türkiye through both government-to-government and business-to-business development.

The program has allowed for cooperation on district heating and cooling, primarily from the legislation point of view in the past, she explained.

A heating act in Denmark in place since the early 80s was a starting point in which the most useful legislative elements were considered for better heat planning. These were then debated for application in the Turkish context with a particular focus on the development of geothermal energy for district heating, a resource that is plentiful in Türkiye.

Paardekooper explained that the third phase incorporates the application process, methods of supporting project development, and financing for different district heating energy projects.

“A geothermal and heat law is somewhere in the legislative process that may hopefully materialize. We are working with the (Turkish) ministry (of industry and technology) to see how we can also support secondary legislation with the explicit purpose of developing district energy," she said.

"We are quite optimistic that in this third phase it will be possible to round it off and come to a kind of consolidation and conclusion of what we have done and open the pathways for future cooperation," Paardekooper said, adding that although the program needs to end at the third phase, the idea is to move on for further commercial and climate cooperation.

Study visit to Denmark

A study visit this week of Turkish clean energy companies and government officials to Denmark, as part of the BEST For Energy Project, is seeing the exploration of opportunities for new bilateral partnerships in clean energy and technologies.

The delegation consists of 20 representatives from clean energy companies and institutions in Türkiye, officials from the Izmir Development Agency (IZKA), the Association of Energy Industrialists and Businessmen (ENSIA), Turkish Offshore Wind Energy Association and the Izmir Metropolitan Municipality and Izenerji.

The European Commission, within the scope of the Competitive Sectors Program of Türkiye's Ministry of Industry and Technology, supports the BEST For Energy Project.

Initiated in the third quarter of 2020, IZKA, along with Izmir-based ENSIA, is responsible for implementing the project that focuses on green growth based on environmental sustainability goals.