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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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Energy is an essential requirement for sustainable development, society, and the world. Turkey has been trying to increase the use of renewable sources in electricity energy production with the incentive policies it has implemented in recent years. Accordingly, in the 2019–2023 Strategic Plan of the Ministry of Energy and Natural Resources, targets to increase the installed capacity of renewable energy sources have been determined. In this context, this article examines fort the first time, the effect of installed capacity of renewable energy sources on sectoral electricity demand. Thus, the study aims to evaluate the renewable energy policies implemented in Turkey. For this purpose, firstly, sectoral electricity demands were estimated for the period 1988–2017 using the autoregressive distributed lag bound testing approach. Then, forecasts were made for the period 2019–2023 with the econometric simulation method. The findings show that the Installed Capacity variable significantly and negatively affects electricity demand in all sectors in the long run. According to the forecast results made in the second stage of the study, it was observed that the higher the increase rate in the installed capacity of renewable energy sources, the faster the electricity demand would decrease. According to these results, Turkey needs to increase the share of renewable energy sources in electricity production in terms of economic and environmental sustainability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

[Display omitted] • A model is proposed to maximize market performance including tradable certificates. • The long-term impacts of regulations on market are discussed by fine and subsidy. • Three important objectives for government are investigated under four scenarios. • The obtained results are validated by Turkey's energy data as a real case study. • Fine policy is more effective than a subsidy to empower renewable electricity. In the last decades, due to the increasing environmental concerns such as energy-resource depletion and global warming, energy efficiency instruments and renewable energy production has been promoted more than ever. This paper investigates a comprehensive comparison between two energy markets, i.e., the tradable white certificate (TWC) market and the tradable green certificate (TGC) market. How to coordinate the two energy markets and what the coordination impacts become the main issues under a reward-penalty mechanism. This multi-agent problem is discussed in an electricity supply chain consisting of two populations of traditional energy suppliers who want to decide about using one of them under government intervention. In this regard, the behavior of the suppliers is analyzed under three different Scenarios, including traditional power generation, energy efficiency program (EEP), and renewable portfolio standards (RPSs). An evolutionary game is applied to formulate the problem. The results show that a mandatory fine policy is more useful than an energy-saving subsidy to motivate the traditional suppliers to move toward sustainable energy generation. This policy also helps governments to meet their sustainable-oriented goals, as we discussed in this work. The findings can be applied to extend sustainable-based energy projects in developing countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Turkish government aimed to increase the installed capacities of coal-fired power plants (CFPPs) according to several policies and strategic plans published in recent years. Energy production from CFPPs and subsidizing the coal sector were selected for reducing the import dependency as a cheaper option. CFPPs with gaseous emissions as well as fly ash and fine dust, along with ash storage, coal storage, and coal mining operations and water use for cooling of the plants, affect the environmental quality. Hence, the health of inhabitants of the environment is affected. CFPPs to be built, according to strategic plans, will emit a significant amount of greenhouse gases (GHGs) and would severely undermine the targets for a 1.5 ℃ or 2 ℃ warmer world. Subsidies to the coal sector, along with exemptions from environmental regulations, combined with slower growth of energy production from renewable energy sources (RES), may lead to a path dependence on coal, while the rest of the world increases their energy production from RES. This study demonstrates the concrete examples of pollution caused by CFPPs in Turkey, along with health effects with the addition of policy context toward utilization of CFPPs, to point out the risks these plants constitute both for the environment and economy. Increasing the share of RES in the energy mixture is particularly important for Turkey due to being in a geographical region that is highly vulnerable to climate change effects. This study also briefly discusses how the increase of RES and de-carbonization in Turkey could be conducted in the short- and long-term, upon the literature provided. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]