Cheapest electricity is the saved one

The same reply comes whenever we ask why we need so many coal mines, so many hydroelectric power plants (HES) and so many thermic power plants: “We need a lot of energy.”

However, experts argue that Turkey’s electric power supply is by far adequate for its population of 77 million. But we have sectors that absorb energy, such as steel-iron, cement, construction ceramics, etc.…

It is as if no industrial policies have been made; no one has any intention to do so either. Only the notion of “wherever we find coal, let’s burn it; wherever we find flowing water, let’s put 10 handcuffs on it, let’s produce electricity.”

Unless we organize our industry correctly, unless we make a revolutionary transformation, the country’s people, resources, soil, water and coal will not last…

There are also theories that those continuously built thermics, HES’s and the nuclear power plants to be built are not only for us. These theories do not look so ridiculous when we question why we continue to build new power plants while our electricity demand does not increase, why we do not avoid energy-intensive sectors, why nobody is talking about saving. Perhaps we are going to produce electricity to sell to the world.

Is our target to take the creeks of the Black Sea from the hands of grannies and become the electricity producer of the world? To excavate coal and build power plants to such an extent that there will be no human beings, creek or nature left…

For instance, we built the Ermenek Dam and its HES 5 kilometers away from the coal mine where the last disaster happened. We elevated its underground water 90 meters for 100 megawatt electricity.

Geology engineer Tahir Öngür explains the disaster in...