The role of the state in the implementation of environmentally friendyly energy policies in Turkey and European Union

The relatively cheap fossil fuels has been used widely for supplying the energy demands and the long term use of them caused many environmental problems including air pollution, greenhouse effect and climate warming, water pollution and soil pollution. The increasing environmental awareness in the world and Turkey brought forward the need for increasing use of the renewable energy resources such as solar, wind, geothermal, hydropower, wave power and hydrogen. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the environmentally friendly energy policies implemented in EU countries and Turkey for extending the use of renewable energy resources. The study is comprised of three chapters. In the first chapter, environmentally friendly energy policies and means of stimulus are addressed in a theoretical framework. In the second chapter, policies and applications in EU countries are explained in a detailed manner. Finally in the last chapter, environmentally friendly energy policies and incentive mechanisms in Turkey are evaluated in comparison with the applications of EU countries. As a result of this study it was found that significant progress has been made with respect to increasing the share of renewable energy in the total energy supply and benefiting maximum from the available potential, but there is still a lot of space for improvement.