Macroeconomic determinants of renewable energy consumption in OECD countries and policy recommendations for Turkey

Energy is already one of the most important resources needed to meet our basic needs. The concept of energy, which has become an important issue in today's world, has reached significant dimensions especially with increasing population ratio and technological developments. The intensity of relations between countries increases in open economic conditions and global world order. As one of the main commodities subject to trade, fossil energy sources are emerging. Significant dependence on fossil fuels has led to a shift to alternative energy sources as a consequence of the extinction of fossil fuels, disrupting environmental conditions and ecological balance. As a result of intensive energy consumption, environmental and renewable resources have increased in recent years. This situation increases the consumption of renewable energy sources at a high rate. The study will also affect the renewable energy policies in political and macroeconomic variables are tested by using per capita energy use, per capita GDP, government final consumption expenditures and government efficiency variables for 14 OECD countries for the period 2000-2015. According to the results obtained solar energy from renewable energy sources for Turkey's economy not achieved any meaningful estimator results for modeling, total final consumption expenditure for wind energy, government efficiency and significant and positive estimator results for the per capita GDP was obtained. According to the results of Emirmahmutoğlu and Köse (2011) panel causality test, there is no causality relation between the per capita GDP for solar energy variable in any country. The protection hypothesis is valid in Australia, Spain, Austria and Germany countries where there is one-way causality from GDP per capita to solar energy and one-way causality from GDP per capita to wind energy for the UK. One-way relationship to GDP per capita from wind energy is found in Germany. The growth hypothesis is valid for these countries. For the Turkey and Netherlands, the feedback hypothesis expressing the bidirectional relationship is valid.