Wind Wire: British entry

The projects, which range from 50 to 120 MW, are located in western and south-central Turkey. They represent a total potential investment of nearly EUR750 million, RES says. Applications for production licences, the first stage in the permission process for the six projects, were lodged with the Energy Market Regulatory Authority (Emra) in November 2007, when Emra last opened its doors for applications. RES expects the first licence to be issued in the next few months and hopes the projects can be completed by 2013. "We have been actively reviewing our expansion in the Mediterranean markets and have identified the Turkish market as one of the major growth areas for our business," says Jean-Marc Armitano, chief executive officer of RES Mediterranean, based in southern France. The company opened a subsidiary firm, RES Anatolia, in Istanbul at the end of last year to investigate what it calls Turkey's large, untapped economic potential for wind energy.