The role of energy efficiency and renewable energy strategies in Turkish energy policy: A comparative analysis

In all over the world, there have been assessed two common energy and climate strategies. One relies on improving energy efficiency and the other aims to increase the market share of renewable energy. Turkey, being an important country in terms of energy and climate issues is required to integrate energy efficiency and renewable energy strategies into energy planning to better decide on energy sector investments, to develop appropriate energy and climate policy strategies and to evaluate energy-related issues from economic and environmental viewpoints. Therefore, in order to analyze the impacts of energy efficiency and renewable energy policies and measures on the end-use energy consumption with greenhouse gas emissions, three energy policy scenarios for Turkey were developed using the Wuppertal Scenario Modeling System. These scenarios are reference for the years2010, 2020 and 2030, while domestic/independent is for 2020 and green/sustainable domestic is for 2020 and 2030. The alternative two scenarios accept the main governmental targets for the improvement of energy efficiency and the increase in the share of renewable energy. Additionally, these newly developed scenarios for Turkey were compared with the corresponding scenarios developed by International Energy Agency (IEA reference), Ministry of Environment and Urbanism (MoEU reference and alternative) in Turkey and Greenpeace (reference and revolution) which are currently available approaches for Turkey. Especially it is crucial to observe the difference between the developed reference and domestic/independent and MoEU reference and alternative ones, respectively. As a conclusion, it can be commented that the currently available MoEU scenarios make over-estimation as compared to not only developed scenarios but also the other available scenarios even if in the reference case. Hence, there is an urgent requirement to develop proper modeling approaches, like Wuppertal Institute modeling, to be able to get more realistic future projections by considering the scenario alternatives based on true assumption in the line with the country characteristics and government targets.