Turkey Imposes Regulation on Buildings to Meet 5% Energy Needs from RE

Source: nzeb.in

The world is ramping up energy efficiency efforts by establishing new building codes. Recently, India also set up new norms, including for residential buildings, under the ambit of Energy Conservation (Amendment) Bill 2022. In its bid towards decarbonization, Japan has also mandated the installation of solar panels for new homes post 2025. Now, Turkey has also introduced a new regulation for buildings, as per which, any building which takes up space above 5,000 square meters will have to be B energy efficiency class. These large-sized buildings are stipulated to meet 5% of energy that they consume from renewable resources.

With this regulation in place, Turkey is looking to reduce its energy consumption by 25%. Additionally,  it will also help slash Turkey’s energy import bill by 5 billion Turkish Liras. Currently, Turkey primarily depends on other countries for its energy needs and relies on over 70% import.

As per the new regulation, which mandates that all new structures be designed as NZEB, (Nearly Zero-Energy Buildings) says that building projects that do not toe the line will not be given construction permissions by authorities.

The NZEB norms will be applied starting January 2025 for buildings bigger that 2,000 square meters in size. From the current 5%, the renewable energy need will be increased to 10%, facilitating the reduction of yearly energy bill on imports by another 7.5 billion liras. 2030 onwards, the rules will be applicable for buildings that are 1,000 square meters and more in size.

The new set of regulations also states that the thickness of the insulation materials used to make buildings have to be raised from 5 centimeters to 8 centimeters in Istanbul. The thickness of these materials are to be raised from 6 centimeters to 9 centimeters in Ankara.

The country introduced The National Energy Efficiency Action Plan 2017 which indicated 55 actions in six categories to bring down the cumulative primary energy consumption by 14 per cent between 2017 and 2023. This would amount to a total primary energy savings of 277.9 TWh.