Embed sustainability in motorway design and finance
Antalya Alanya Otoyolu İnşaat Yatırım ve İşletme A.Ş.
SKD Türkiye总结
A build-operate-transfer motorway links environmental and social targets to financing and embeds climate resilience and biodiversity requirements into design and procurement.
Context
Submitted through the COP31 Sustainable Transformation Awards · SKD Türkiye (WBCSD Global Network Partner)
Antalya Alanya Otoyolu İnşaat Yatırım ve İşletme A.Ş. is the project company established to deliver and operate the Antalya Alanya Motorway under a build-operate-transfer concession. It is wholly owned by Limak Holding and will manage the asset through construction and the operating period before transfer to the public authority. The project company has 92 employees.
An independent sustainability assessment classifies the company in the transport infrastructure industry, where the material sustainability issues are reduction of air emissions, stakeholder responsibility, worker health and safety and product safety, business ethics and government relations, and responsible land use and biodiversity management. Those are the areas the project's sustainability model is built around.
Access along this stretch of coast depends on the existing D400 coastal road. In peak tourism season the route carries congestion, unpredictable journey times, accident risk and congestion-related fuel consumption and emissions, and it is exposed to flood and other climate-driven hazards. The corridor serves a resident population of 2.7 million and more than 25 million visitors a year, so a disruption to the single available route affects tourism, agriculture, logistics and trade at the same time.
The company's response was to treat sustainability as a design and financing parameter rather than as an environmental compliance exercise or a corporate responsibility programme. Resilience, biodiversity, renewable energy and social performance targets were written into the engineering design, the procurement rules and the loan documentation before construction started, so that performance against them is measurable and contractually enforceable throughout the concession.
The Implementation Contract was signed in 2024 and construction began in 2025. The concession runs for 15 years in total: 3 years of construction followed by 12 years of operation, after which the asset is transferred to the public authority.
Location of the initiative: Antalya to Alanya corridor, including Serik, Manavgat and Alanya districts, Türkiye
Solution
The corridor is a 122 km motorway including connection roads, designed to cut the Antalya to Alanya journey from 2.5 hours to 36 minutes. The initiative described here is the sustainability model applied to that asset, which operates across four layers.
The first layer is climate-resilient engineering. Design decisions are informed by a project-specific Climate Resilience Matrix and supporting geological, hydrological and flood-risk studies. Hydraulic design applies defined return-period criteria and climate-adjusted design assumptions appropriate to the relevant structures and crossings.
The second layer is certified performance management. The project is registered for Envision certification and targets Gold level verification, and at the time of writing it is the only project in Türkiye listed in the ISI Envision projects directory (1). Environmental and social impact assessment follows the IFC Performance Standards and the Equator Principles alongside national regulation.
The third layer is financing. Sustainability targets are attached to the capital structure rather than reported separately, so that environmental and social delivery carries a financial consequence.
The fourth layer is supply chain and stakeholder management. The Sustainable Procurement Programme translates project-level sustainability commitments into material and supplier-specific requirements, supported by supplier declarations, documentary evidence and cost-based performance tracking, and a Stakeholder Engagement Plan governs consultation with affected communities.
The model is also aligned with the UNECE PIERS framework on access and equity, economic effectiveness, environmental sustainability, scalability and stakeholder engagement, and it was selected as one of 70 case studies presented at the 10th UNECE Forum held from 27 to 29 April 2026.
Figure 1: Corridor map of the 122 km Antalya–Alanya motorway alignment along the Mediterranean coast.
Figure 2: Map showing the intersection of Q500 flood risk maps and the project route.
Impact
Sustainability impact
Climate
Project related Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions are monitored according to the defined organisational and operational boundaries of the GHG inventory. Emissions avoided by users through shorter journeys sit outside the company's own inventory and are tracked separately as an avoided-emissions estimate.
Because construction began in 2025 and operation starts in 2028, the figures below are modelled targets rather than realised reductions.
A 10 MWp solar plant is expected to avoid approximately 94,336 tonnes of CO2 over the 12-year operating period. Traffic efficiency is projected to deliver a net reduction of 2,908 tonnes of carbon emissions between 2028 and 2040. Afforestation under a 5:1 replanting protocol covers 1,394,575 trees, described in the source material as 1.4 million trees, and is projected to provide a carbon sink effect of approximately 217,980 tonnes of CO2e over the same period.
Energy supply targets are dated and carry a financial consequence because they sit in the loan documentation: the share of renewable energy in electricity consumption rises to 90 per cent by 2029, and the renewable electricity share reaches 100 per cent by 2030 and is held there thereafter.
Charging infrastructure is treated the same way. EV charging capacity per eligible service area, counting both the east and west carriageways, rises to 1,800 kW by 2030 and to 3,400 kW by 2035, and the design creates 13.6 MW of EV-ready infrastructure against a 2.0 MW minimum compliance scenario.
An independent pre-issuance review (Second Party Opinion) rated the renewable energy target robust, the only one of the four loan targets to satisfy all three benchmarking approaches, and found it in line with international targets.
Nature
Biodiversity is managed through project biodiversity plans built on the mitigation hierarchy applied during the environmental and social impact assessment. Habitats along the corridor were surveyed and the critical maquis habitat was identified as the priority receptor.
The project targets a minimum 10% net gain for the relevant maquis habitat, subject to the project-specific biodiversity methodology, restoration measures and long-term monitoring. Separately, a 5:1 afforestation commitment provides for the planting of approximately 1.4 million trees.
Sensitive subjects such as biodiversity and archaeology are managed with the relevant public institutions and independent specialists rather than in-house.
Social
Land acquisition and resettlement are managed under a Resettlement Action Plan and a Livelihood Restoration Plan aligned with IFC Performance Standard 5, with the objective of avoiding, minimising and compensating displacement effects and of maintaining or improving livelihoods and living standards.
Livelihood restoration builds capacity in banana, citrus and tropical fruit growing, livestock, beekeeping and organic agriculture, so that affected households retain an income base rather than a one-off payment. Implementation of some of these measures has begun.
Public participation meetings were held in the Serik, Manavgat and Alanya districts, and feedback on land acquisition, agricultural effects and environmental and social risks was fed back into mitigation measures and communication plans. Separate consultations were arranged for women, facilitated by female staff, so that vulnerable groups could raise concerns directly. 1,274 stakeholder engagement activities had been recorded by the end of July 2026.
A Community Liaison Officer team maintains continuous contact with local communities, and a grievance mechanism accepts submissions through a call centre, locked boxes and other channels, with a 30-day resolution target.
Women's employment is one of the targets embedded in the loan structure, which places social performance on the same monitoring footing as environmental performance. The commitment is staged: women's participation in total employment rises to 30 per cent by 2029, 35 per cent by 2032 and 40 per cent by 2035, and is maintained at that level thereafter, while women's participation at Board level is held at 40 per cent.
The independent pre-issuance review found the total employment target ambitious against the industry peer group, the Board-level target in line with peers, and the pair likely to contribute to SDG 5.5 on women's full and effective participation in leadership.
Business impact
Benefits
The project carries an investment value of EUR 2.5 billion, of which EUR 1.7 billion was raised as a sustainability-linked loan. Eighty per cent of total financing is linked to Envision Gold certification, renewable electricity, EV charging capacity and women's employment targets, which converts sustainability delivery into a condition of the financing terms.
A EUR 205 million interest rate hedge was also linked to the same sustainability targets, completing what the counterparty bank publicly describes as the first sustainability-linked interest rate swap in Türkiye (2).
The loan KPIs are specific and dated: Envision Gold verification by 2031; a renewable energy share of electricity consumption of 90 per cent by 2029 and a renewable electricity share of 100 per cent by 2030 and thereafter; approximately 10 MWp of solar investment; EV charging capacity per eligible service area, covering both the east and west carriageways, of 1,800 kW by 2030 and 3,400 kW by 2035, creating 13.6 MW of EV-ready infrastructure against a 2.0 MW minimum compliance scenario; and staged women's participation targets in total employment and at Board level.
An independent second party opinion provider carried out a pre-issuance review of the structure. The opinion was issued on 19 June 2025, covered the loan as agreed on 22 May 2025 and drew on an engagement conducted between March and June 2025. It benchmarked the transaction against the Sustainability-Linked Loan Principles administered by the Loan Market Association as of February 2023, found the framework aligned with those principles, and found the loan consistent with the company's sustainability strategy.
All four loan KPIs were assessed as relevant and aligned: Envision certification; the share of renewable energy in electricity consumption; total charging capacity of electric vehicle charging stations per eligible service area; and women's participation rate in total employment and at Board level. The first three were rated core to the business model and the fourth moderately core. On materiality, the Envision certification KPI was rated moderately material, the renewable energy and women's participation KPIs moderately material, and the EV charging KPI partially material.
Target ambition was benchmarked three ways: against the company's own past performance, against the industry peer group and against international targets. All four targets were judged ambitious against past performance, on limited evidence. Against peers, the Envision and renewable energy targets were ambitious, the EV charging target in line with peers, and the women's employment target ambitious for total employment and in line with peers at Board level. The renewable energy target satisfied all three benchmarking approaches and was rated robust; the other three satisfied two of the three and were rated good. That external calibration is what allows the targets to price into the financing rather than sit alongside it.
Embedding the targets at design stage reduces the risk of later retrofit, redesign or change-order costs, and the corridor is expected to support EUR 6.8 billion of economic activity according to an independent study prepared by Deloitte.
Journey time between Antalya and Alanya falls from 2.5 hours to 36 minutes, which is expected to reduce vehicle operating costs and improve reliability for the tourism, agriculture and logistics traffic the corridor carries.
Costs
The overall project capital investment is the EUR 2.5 billion capital investment in the corridor itself. On top of that, the sustainability model adds certification, assessment and monitoring costs: Envision assessment, environmental and social impact assessment to IFC and Equator Principles standards, biodiversity and resettlement planning, a dedicated sustainability team and continuous data collection against loan KPIs.
Linking loan terms to performance also transfers risk to the borrower, because missing a target has a financial consequence rather than a reputational one alone.
Delivery depends on data quality, coordination between institutions, supplier maturity, local capacity and long-term monitoring. These dependencies are managed through standard document sets, sustainability management plans, digital monitoring systems, supplier criteria, stakeholder engagement procedures and defined KPI structures.
Costs are contained by setting the targets before procurement, so that suppliers price against known criteria, and by using a coordinated evidence and data architecture, using common underlying project data wherever methodologies overlap.
Impact beyond sustainability and business
Co-benefits
Placing environmental and social criteria in supplier evaluation extends the effect beyond the project boundary, because contractors and subcontractors are required to develop certification, resource efficiency and occupational health and safety capability to qualify for work.
The separate consultation route for women, and the women's employment target in the loan structure, create a documented channel for groups that are typically under-represented in large civil works.
The corridor also strengthens connectivity for a resident population of 2.7 million and for more than 25 million visitors a year, which supports regional economic activity beyond the transport function itself.
Potential side-effects
The main trade-off is that a new corridor requires land acquisition and can displace households and agricultural livelihoods. These impacts are managed and mitigated through the Resettlement Action Plan, the Livelihood Restoration Plan and the grievance mechanism rather than treated as an unavoidable consequence.
Construction of a 122 km corridor carries habitat disturbance and construction-phase emissions that precede any operational benefit, so the environmental case depends on effective implementation and monitoring of avoidance, minimisation, restoration and compensation measures throughout construction and operation.
A concession structure also concentrates long-term performance risk in a single project company across a 15-year term, which makes the continuity mechanisms described under governance a condition of the model working.
Designing infrastructure to defined climate and hydrological criteria does not eliminate residual climate risk. Long-term resilience also depends on inspection, maintenance, drainage performance, asset management and periodic review of evolving climate information.
Implementation
Typical business profile
The model suits project companies and sponsors delivering large concession-based infrastructure — motorways, energy transmission, ports or urban infrastructure — where a single contract covers design, construction and a defined operating period.
It is most relevant where international financing is involved, because the lender relationship is what makes performance targets enforceable, and where the asset is exposed to climate hazards that can be designed against, such as flood, heat or slope instability.
Delivery engages design, construction, environment, occupational health and safety, finance, procurement, technical office, O&M/asset management and social impact functions working to a shared reporting cycle.
Approach
Set the sustainability scope before design freeze: Decide which certification scheme, impact assessment standard and performance areas will govern the project, so that engineering and procurement decisions are made against them rather than adjusted afterwards.
Run the environmental and social impact assessment to an international standard: Apply the IFC Performance Standards and Equator Principles alongside national regulation, and use the mitigation hierarchy to classify habitats and identify priority receptors.
Build the climate resilience case: Use a resilience matrix supported by geological, hydrological and flood risk analysis, and size hydraulic and drainage structures against modelled return periods rather than historic averages.
Convert targets into financing terms and have them independently calibrated: Select a small number of measurable targets covering certification level, renewable energy, low-carbon infrastructure and social inclusion, attach them to the loan and hedging documentation with defined measurement rules, and obtain a pre-issuance second party opinion benchmarking each target against past performance, sector peers and international reference points.
Establish project-level governance: Issue a Sustainability Charter, appoint a dedicated sustainability team, and define targets, actions, monitoring indicators and unit-level responsibilities in a sustainability management plan integrated into business unit activity.
Extend the criteria into procurement: Assess suppliers against environmental certification, resource efficiency, occupational health and safety, ethics and social compliance criteria and cost based tracking so that the supply chain can evidence the same standards.
Deliver land acquisition and livelihood restoration as a managed programme: Prepare resettlement and livelihood restoration plans, hold public participation meetings in each affected district, arrange separate consultation for vulnerable groups, and operate a grievance mechanism with a defined resolution period.
Monitor and report against the same evidence base: Track greenhouse gas emissions, renewable energy, EV infrastructure, biodiversity, climate resilience, resource efficiency, social inclusion and livelihoods, and establish an integrated monitoring architecture and reuse common underlying project data across Envision, E&S monitoring and SLL reporting wherever definitions and methodologies are compatible.
Stakeholders involved
Project leads: Senior management and the Board own the sustainability targets and manage the project against a stated ambition to set a new sustainability benchmark for motorway infrastructure in Türkiye. A project-specific Sustainability Charter was issued and a sustainability team was appointed to coordinate the process, with the Envision target, loan KPIs, climate resilience, renewable energy, women's employment, biodiversity and stakeholder engagement tracked at senior management level.
Company functions: Project directorates work alongside sustainability, environment, occupational health and safety, finance, procurement, technical office, design and social impact teams. The sustainability management plan assigns targets, actions, monitoring indicators and responsibilities to each unit, so that the work is carried out inside existing business processes rather than by a separate team.
Main providers: The construction contractor delivers the works under the concession, supported by environmental, social and technical consultants who prepare the impact assessment, resilience analysis and biodiversity planning. Suppliers and subcontractors are engaged through the sustainable procurement criteria. The lender group defines the financing requirements; the Sustainability Coordinator supports the sustainability-linked structure; the independent Second Party Opinion provider assesses KPI selection and target calibration; performance verification follows the requirements established in the financing documentation.
Other: The National Highways Authority oversees the concession and participates in project-level coordination on relevant environmental, social and technical commitments. Local administrations, public institutions, regional academic institutions, non-governmental organisations, affected communities and specialist agencies for biodiversity and archaeology are engaged through the stakeholder engagement plan, the community liaison team and the grievance mechanism.
Key parameters to consider
The concession runs 15 years in total, comprising 3 years of construction and 12 years of operation before transfer to the public authority, which sets the horizon for every commitment made.
Hydraulic structures are designed against 10-year, 100-year and 500-year return period flows, and specified major structural components target a 100-year structural life. The solar plant is sized at 10 MWp with an operating period of 12 years. Afforestation runs at a 5:1 replanting ratio.
Impact data is tracked through Envision scoring, loan KPI monitoring, resettlement and livelihood restoration plan records, stakeholder engagement records and grievance mechanism outputs, so that reporting draws on operational records rather than on a separate reporting exercise.
The Envision application is in progress and the Gold level is a target, not an achieved certification. Environmental outcomes are modelled for the 2028 to 2040 period, so verification depends on the asset entering operation.
The second party opinion is a pre-issuance verification. It assesses how the KPIs were selected and how the targets were calibrated, not performance against them, and it stays valid only for as long as the loan and the benchmarks for the sustainability performance targets remain unchanged. Any renegotiation of the targets therefore requires the opinion to be refreshed.
Implementation and operations tips
Attaching targets to financing is what changes behaviour, but it only works if the measurement rules are agreed at signing. Targets that cannot be evidenced from routine project data become a reporting burden and a dispute risk later.
Commission the external opinion on target calibration before signing, not after. The review tests each target three ways, against past performance, against sector peers and against international reference points, which is also a useful internal check on whether a target is genuinely stretching or merely restating a plan. A target that is only ambitious against past performance, on limited evidence, will read as weaker than one that clears all three tests.
Setting the criteria before procurement matters as much as setting them before design. Suppliers that are asked for certification, resource efficiency and social compliance evidence after award will price the change rather than absorb it.
The recurring constraints are data quality, coordination between institutions, supplier maturity, local capacity and sustaining monitoring across a long concession. Standard document sets, digital monitoring, defined supplier criteria and a documented stakeholder procedure are what keep these manageable.
Consultation designed only as a public meeting will not reach every affected group. A separate route for women, facilitated by female staff, and a grievance mechanism with a published resolution period produced feedback that changed mitigation measures.
Going further
Sources
(2) QNB Türkiye, “Türkiye’de bir ilk: sürdürülebilirlik bağlantılı faiz swap işlemi” (14 November 2025)