Evaluation of the incentives for investors in the renewable energy market in Turkey

Renewable energy sources are the sources which are consistently found in nature, and do not have extinction risk like fossil energy sources. The increase in the use of these sources will both reduce foreign dependency of countries on energy and prevent the current account deficit which can be resulted in energy imports. In addition, the use of renewable energy sources which is also known as clean energy is considered as one of the important factors to deal with problems such as global warming and climate changing. Within this framework, in order to increase the use of renewable energy sources in Turkey, the early legislative regulations have been conducted in 2005. The aim of the legislative regulations is to encourage the investors to renewable energy market and so to enhance the use of renewable energy sources. In 2011, "Renewable Energy Sources Support Mechanism (YEKDEM)" has come into effect. Along with YEKDEM, investment incentive system of Ministry of Economics and several incentives mechanism have been carried into effect following years. The aim of the study is to determine how these legislative regulations and process in incentive mechanism are evaluated by investors acting in renewable energy market in Turkey, and to take their opinion to create more successful incentive system. As a research method, questionnaire is used to collect primary data. In the direction of the empirical findings which obtained from the application on sample selected among renewable energy investors in Turkey; it is found that investors perceive the change in renewable energy legislation as a risk factor; they expect improvement particularly in financial incentive elements and they expect increase in legislative regulation which will make them permanent in the market.