Turkey's message as COP31 opens today: Electrify, recycle, skip coal

As the CO climate summit approaches, host nation Turkey is putting electrification front and centre, touting its renewables boom while pushing its Zero Waste agenda as a way to reduce methane emissions. But local environmental campaigners say it sidesteps the "elephant in the room" of Turkey's ongoing reliance on coal and obscures the fact it has effectively become "Europe's dumping ground" for plastic waste.When the UN summit opens Monday in Antalya, CO President Murat Kurum, who is also Turkey's environment minister, will be pushing Ankara's flagship initiative to make electricity account for 35% of global energy demand by 2035. The non-binding "35 by 35" target is key to a 10-point Action Agenda that Turkey says will speed up the shift to renewables while shoring up energy security."This year's energy crisis has shocked us ... everyone now understands that energy that you import is energy that you do not control. Electrification is the answer," Kurum said on Thursday.CO's aim is "to usher in the age of electricity", he said.Turkey has made huge advances in renewables infrastructure in recent years, with energy minister Alparslan Bayraktar on Thursday unveiling an ambitious $500 billion roadmap to electrify its economy and expand its installed wind and solar capacity fourfold to 175 gigawatts.Yet with a third of its electricity derived from coal, no date for phasing it out and plans to expand two existing coal-fired power plants alongside its electrification drive, CO will be a test for Turkey's climate leadership, campaigners say.Turkey's first nuclear plant is due to come online by the year's end, with plans to set up two more. Both Turkey and CO co-host Australia, which is steering the negotiations, have set targets for reducing heat-trapping emissions, but neither has adopted a national "roadmap" explicitly detailing plans to exit fossil fuels. afpYou use AI every day. Now get your AI Quotient. Take the AIQ test.