Turkish energy minister Taner Yildiz said last week that the country planned to establish a 3500MW thermal power plant in the western province of Afyon, according to Hurriyet Daily News.

Yildiz said that the exploration by the Mineral Research and Exploration in the Dinar district of Afyon, which had been underway for the past five years, had been completed and that they had discovered lignite reserves in the area totalling about 950 million tons.

“We aim to build a thermal power plant, worth $5 billion, that will have 3500MW of power. It means employment for 6000 or 7000 in the plant’s construction and the mining field,” he said.

“We aim to raise the local coal-fired power plant’s capacity to 30,000MW in the next 10 years,” he said, recalling the country’s goal to generate one-third of its electricity from coal by 2023.

Turkey relies heavily on imported natural gas, mostly from Russia, Iran and Azerbaijan.

Yildiz said the investment in local coal would be profitable for Afyon and Turkey.

Yildiz said it had also made investments worth $1.2 billion in the past 10 years for clean coal technologies and the environment, adding that they would invest more than $1 billion in advance, reported Hurriyet Daily News.