A Comprehensive Analysis of Strategies, Challenges and Policies on Turkish Sustainable Energy Development

Abstract

Turkey's rapid population and economic growth have caused a significant increase in energy demand over the last two decades. As a result, a process of evaluating alternative energy strategies and policies was required to be formulated carefully along with the country's longer-term decarbonisation aims. Although Turkey's considerable renewable energy potential exists, its dependency on foreign energy and its dramatically depreciating currency have been the main drivers of revisions to these renewable energy-related policies. This paper aims to demonstrate and evaluate all the strategies and challenges of Turkey's green steps toward a sustainable future. Sustainable developments of many developed countries have been examined and compared to assess Turkish strategies and significant policies that have been taken. As findings, it has been revealed that policy revisions regarding the use of domestic technology in green power plants decelerate investments for a short time. However, it has been found that renewable energy patent applications have declined, although domestic technology in green energy plants has been promoted through these policy revisions. As a result of this dilemma, the quality and effectiveness of green research and development (R&D) in Turkey have been investigated and then benchmarked with most leading countries. It has been observed that there is no correlation and relation between the patent application and the articles on renewable energy. Therefore, the paper has provided insight into new policies and strategies to enhance the productivity of R&D for both Turkey and developing similar countries. Consequently, potential measures to increase Turkey's green energy use and production are discussed and proposed systematically, considering those findings.