The effect of renewable energy resources on economic growth: A case study for Turkey

The need for energy increases with the use of energy in almost every field, the development of technology and the increase in population, and this situation may lead to an increase in the dependence of countries on foreign energy with insufficient energy resources and negatively affect the country's economy. If countries are dependent heavily on imports in terms of energy resources, they may be exposed to negative economic consequences. Renewable energy has positive features such as being produced domestically, being inexhaustible and environmentally friendly. At this point, the provision of energy consumption from renewable or non-renewable energy sources may be related to the country's economy and studies are carried out on this relationship. In this study, due to the importance of renewable energy sources, the relationship between total renewable energy sources, economic growth and CO2 emissions were investigated for short and long term for Turkey. When examining this relationship, by using data between 1972 and 2018, Granger causality test, SVAR and ARDL method were applied. According to the findings, the Granger causality test revealed that there was no relationship between renewable energy consumption, economic growth and carbon dioxide emissions, and the neutrality hypothesis was supported. SVAR and ARDL methods show that renewable energy consumption, CO2 emissions and economic growth affect each other in both short and long term. While it is seen that all variables are in a positive relationship with each other with the SVAR method, according to the ARDL method, which has a reliability advantage in short samples, it has been revealed that there is a positive relationship between renewable energy consumption and economic growth and a negative relationship with carbon dioxide emissions. According to the results obtained from the ARDL method, as the consumption of renewable energy increases, economic growth will increase and CO2 emissions will decrease.